The Broken Arm

It was all my fault.  I was playing with Mazzie and tossing her onto a pillow on our bed.  She would land on her back and start laughing and I would do it again.  One time she put her arm back and it sort of caught funny behind her but it didn't look that bad.  She cried for about 20 seconds.  Maggie came in and held her and she stopped.  Almost instantly she was holding things, clapping and seemingly fine.  I worried at first, but seeing how soft she landed and how quickly she stopped crying I assumed she was fine.  I had to run off to class, but right after Maggie called me and told me that we needed to take Mazzie in because she couldn't crawl.  As soon as she put weight on her arm it collapsed under her.  Sure enough she had a buckle fracture.  It's when the bone sort of crunches together instead of breaking or cracking.  I felt horrible.

Kids are so resilient.  This is Mazzie right after we got home from the hospital with her splint.  The most traumatizing part of the whole thing for Mazzie was the fact that her splint prevented her arm from bending and she couldn't get her thumb in her mouth (she's a big thumb sucker).  She never switched to the other side and she was miserable for those first 5 days.

She got a pink permanent cast and lucky for all of us it was only on her forearm and didn't include her elbow.  She didn't even seem to notice it except that she realized that it made a good club to hit people with.  It also made a clumping sound when she went into the kitchen to find food on the ground to eat, or when she was heading up the stairs.  It made it easier to catch her before she got too far.

Here she is much happier with her thumb in her mouth.  Her new pink cast made her thumb accessible and everyone was glad.

She got her cast off after 2 weeks.  The doctor said it was one of the cleaner casts she's seen on a baby and she was quite surprised that nothing had gotten stuck in it.  We were surprised too.  Her bone healed fine and she is doing great.