Nightmare

   My morning started out at 4:00 when Madison woke to eat.  I posted on facebook jokingly that I was excited about the Royal wedding, just kidding feeding the baby.  She ate and we slept some more.  Just after 8:00 we got up and headed downstairs, excited to watch the tape of the wedding, take advantage of the beautiful weather, finally the rain stopped, and enjoy our last day of maternity leave!!  I had my hands full, water, cell phone, container of stuff for feeding the baby and of course my precious baby.  I started down the stairs like normal then turned to tell the dog to say.  She was laying at the top and staying like a good girl.  I continued down and before I knew it I was falling face first down the stairs.  I can still clearly recall the fear in my head as I fell.  I couldn't believe this was happening and all I could think about was the baby.  I believe that I cradled her at least until my head hit the floor, and it hit really hard. She was screaming, I was sobbing and shaking.  My nose immediately started gushing blood.  I realized that I was intact enough to stand and tried to check her out as well.  I thought I could calm her down by feeding her and when she wouldn't eat I was really scared.  I called my mom.  Not really fair to freak her out when she is 4 hours away but as a nurse and mom she could help me figure out if the baby was OK.  She realized pretty soon that I needed to call 911 and let me go to call.  EMS arrived shortly and all of the guys were so nice.  They kept assuring me that a crying baby was a good sign, I gathered a few things, got myself dressed and we were on the way to the hospital.  Now, unfortunately my cell phone was on vibrate from the evening and I didn't realize that my mom was trying to call me back.  Rob, who she had notified was also trying to call.  They of course panicked when I didn't answer.
     At the ER, I had a few x-rays and reviewed them myself, I was fine, bruised up pretty bad but fine.  Baby had x-rays and a head CT.  The ER doctor told us immediately that the x-rays were OK but it was taking a while to get the CT results.  She came in a pulled up a chair, not a good sign.  She started with the important thing is how good she looks now, meaning that she was crying normally, eating normally and looking around, but there are two small bleeds in her brain.  She didn't need surgery now, but they were going to transfer us to a hospital with a pediatric neurosurgeon in case her symptoms worsened.  I really don't remember my feelings at this point, I was just so numb.  We arrived at St. Alexius hospital and were admitted directly to the PICU.  My mom arrived shortly after and we carefully watched the baby.  She slept most of the day but would wake to eat and seemed to have a good appetite.   At about 7 PM I started to get worried, my baby did not normally sleep this much.  I fed her and then we kept her awake.  We pretty quickly noticed that she appeared to only gaze left.  She would rarely look straight and right but almost always gazed left.  We called the nurse in and she observed the same thing, even with me to her right she turned her whole head, eyes still to the left.  She called the pediatrician on call who came in and was pretty much useless.  She says "well I can get her to look right" and I was pretty shocked at her limited examination of my obviously not normal baby!!!!  My mom (thank God she was there) pushed her to "Please at least notify the neurosurgeon of this development".  He came in to see her (he was already on his way) and ordered a repeat CT scan.  He was down in the room with us and immediately had the results and notified us that it was stable.  Due to the location of the bleed she may tend to gaze left but he felt that it would resolve.  He was very optimistic at this point that she wouldn't need surgery and we were very relieved by his optimism.  She continued to improve so much over the next day they almost discharged us but we ended up staying one more day.  We were quickly downgraded out of the PICU and into a normal pediatric room.  She continued to occasionally gaze left and it would worry us but overall she was doing really well.
    Now, over a week later, she is great.  She is looking all over, focusing on things as she would before and even focusing on more things.  She can actually see her puppy Red now and laughs when she is licked.  She has a little more intention about reaching for objects and even more interactive than before the fall.  She continues to grow like a weed and we have every reason to believe that she is perfectly normal.  She occasionally looks to the left and I get a bit nervous but I think that is my job as her mom to worry.  We have a follow-up appointment Tuesday and will see if follow-up testing will be needed.  I really want to thank all of you for your prayers, it is a miracle that we are both OK after this fall:

 We called her our little Peep in her yellow gown.

 Grandma likes to style my hair after a bath.  Very funny Grandma! (you can see how I look left)

Dad and I are chillin' in the hospital.