A kid’s head is a remarkable thing. An infant’s head has a covering of soft, warm flesh and hair … or no hair at all. Under that flesh is bone, but bone that hasn’t yet formed into a hard, protective covering for the brain.
Anyone who’s handled an infant either knows or has been warned about the baby’s “soft spot,” specifically an area on the top of the skull where the plates have not yet fused together.
“Watch his fontanel!” a helpful onlooker warns, as if you plan to cradle the infant in one arm while you poke a finger or two through the squishy spot and scramble her little baby brains.
Pediatricians tell new parents that babies are tougher than you might think. They aren’t recommending that you learn to juggle infants, though. What they’re trying to do is give new parents the confidence to handle their babies with confidence. Babies aren’t Ming vases. They are precious, but if you can relax while handling them, you will handle them with sure, steady hands.
Most families have one member about whom the rest joke was dropped on his or her head. Har har. And most families have one or two members who have actually taken a hard whack on the head at one time or another.
In our house, Skimbleshanks is our hard head. When he was only about 1-1/2 years old, Ed and I decided that we wanted to add a dog to our family. After a lot of research, we chose the golden retriever as the most family-friendly dog of the canine world. (Note: Yes, I know that lots of dogs are the best, truly I do.)
After putting out the word that we were looking, we found a litter in a nearby town. After talking with the owner, we decided to take the plunge. Ed, Skimbleshanks, and I drove to Newark to see and hopefully come home with one of the two remaining dogs of the litter: Tucker or Tyrone. Just in case, I’d put an animal carrier in the trunk.
We were greeted and settled onto the breeder’s backyard patio. The mother and father dogs looked at us through a sliding-glass door. Tyrone and Tucker were allowed out and gamboled around us in all their puppy splendor.
I was a bit taken aback, since both of the puppies looked just about big enough for Skimbleshanks to ride with the right saddle and bridle. They were handsome, fluffy puppies, and, being the softy that I am, I immediately fell in love with them. We could tell that they loved children because they greeted Skimbleshanks with playful puppy abandon.
I was talking with the breeder when I heard a “thunk” not unlike a watermelon hitting the ground. After a brief pause, Skimbleshanks, who was laid out flat on the ground, began to wail.
The breeder administered first aid (in this case, a Fig Newton), and all was well. Skimbleshanks was fine, Ed and I were fine, and Tucker came home with us.
The head-thunking via dog happened one more time a few months later. We were playing fetch in the back yard, and Tucker was loving it. One throw, however, went behind Skimbleshanks, and Tucker ran right over him to get to the ball. This time the sound of Skimbleshanks’s head connecting with the driveway sounded like a cantaloupe hitting the grocery floor. Again, Skimbleshanks was fine after some sort of snack was administered. Ed and I watched him carefully for signs of concussion, but he was fine. I’m pretty sure that Ed and I suffered some brain damage after that event, though.
Skimbleshanks’s cranial adventures continued when he started attending an in-home daycare. I was at work when Miss Deb called and calmly told me that Skimbleshanks had fallen and she thought it might be a good idea for me to have him looked at.
When I arrived at Miss Deb’s, she told me that Skimbleshanks had been spinning around, trying to make himself dizzy. It worked, and he fell, whacking his forehead on the edge of the coffee table. She warned me that he may need stitches.
I walked into the living room, where Skimbleshanks was lying on the couch, a tea towel covering a baggie of ice on his forehead. He seemed fine, enjoying the attention.
“Well, I hear you’ve been banging up the furniture, buddy,” I said. “Can I take a peek?” He said I could.
I lifted the towel carefully and looked at the hole in my baby’s forehead. Seriously. The edges of the little wound were curled inward, and I saw something whitish in the middle. Yep. That was my baby’s skull.
“Wow … you did quite a job on yourself,” I said, a fake smile pasted on my face. “I hope Miss Deb’s table is OK.”
We drove to the local children’s hospital, where both of us were questioned separately about how he’d hurt himself.
“He was being an idiot, spinning around to make himself dizzy,” I said. “He fell and whacked his head on the edge of a table.” I noticed the beady-eyed look the doctor was giving me.
“So he was with his daycare provider?” the doctor asked.
“Yes, he was, and I trust her implicitly,” I responded.
Stitches were indicated, the doctor said. Since the edges of the wound curled inward, the skin glue that was sometimes used was not going to do a good job. With stitches, the scar would at least be flat. I could, however, request a consult with a plastic surgeon. I said that stitches would be fine. What man doesn’t have a scar somewhere on his face or head? Skimbleshanks would be fine, I was sure.
Unfortunately, for children Skimbleshanks’s age (3-1/2), giving stitches is tricky enough that SOP calls for the child to be strapped down onto a backboard. I was able to grip Skimbleshanks’s fingers, but that was about all of him I could reach.
Both of us were fine until the doctor began cleaning the wound. He used a syringe to squirt disinfectant into it, and it stung. Skimbleshanks began crying, and I assumed the “everything is fine” demeanor while trying to comfort him as best as I was able.
A half-dozen stitches later, and we were good to go. Skimbleshanks has a scar on his forehead, above his right eyebrow. It looks like the Nike swoosh. If he went into sports, I wonder if he’d be able to convince Nike to sponsor him.
As parental scars are, mine is invisible. It’s there, though. Every time my baby hurts, the scar on my heart gives a twinge.
There was a time when Skimbleshanks’s head was the aggressor, rather than the victim.
As kids do, the boys were roughhousing in their room. And, as my mother told my brother and me when we were kids, “When there’s roughhousing, someone always gets hurt.” First it was all thump-bump-bang, then there was a howl of pain that escalated.
Parents learn pretty quickly what sounds mean. This particular one meant that someone was hurt, that there was blood, and that a freak out was imminent.
While I dealt with Buddhaboy, who had a bloody mouth and one tooth hanging by a thread, Skimbleshanks explained what happened to Ed. Basically, it was horsing around led to Skimbleshanks’s skull bashing into Buddhaboy’s mouth.
The outcome was one tooth knocked out and another loosened. No stitches, but a lot of blood, all of it Buddhaboy’s.
After things had calmed down and I consulted with a family friend who is a dental assistant, we learned that baby teeth are pretty much disposable. We’d have to wait and see if the loosened one would firm up or if it would just come out ahead of schedule.
That experience added a few more gray hairs to the collection I’d started during my first pregnancy. Buddhaboy was more sanguine about it and summed things up nicely.
“My teeth were in there really tight, but Skimbleshanks’s head did the trick.”
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