Story of the weekend: Saturday night, after church, I had taken Jared's hand and was steering him away from the children's wing (with all the toys!) towards the foyer. Of course, that didn't bode well in his mind, so he did that toddler drop - relax all muscles and drop to the floor, loudly protesting. I tried to pull him up, as I still had a hold of his hand, which sometimes works, but didn't this time. At the same time, he let out this terrible yelp, a yelp of pain. He then started crying VERY LOUDLY and in obvious pain. It took me a few minutes to settle him down to try to investigate what the problem was. Ryan and I finally figured that it was his wrist that was bothering him. But it didn't swell or turn colour or anything, so we thought maybe it was just sore and would be fine (meanwhile, I'm feeling terrible). So we went over to Ryan's parents' for supper and Jared was weepy the entire evening, refusing to even try to use his left hand. Now he was also very tired, so that didn't help. So we took him home and put him to bed, but everytime he moved, he woke up in pain. Even Tylenol didn't work. Finally Ryan slept with him on the couch, keeping him in one position so he couldn't move that arm.
In the morning Jared was much happier, but still didn't use his left arm (hard to play with one arm!) so we decided to take him to the ER. Turns out that his elbow was dislocated, and they see a lot of this. The doctor didn't even examine him, he just turned his wrist so that the outside of Jared's hand was facing in, and bent up at the elbow. Ryan said he heard the "pop" of it going back into place. The doctor said to just let him play, and if that had been the problem, he would start to use that arm, which he did and we were free to leave. And Jared hasn't had a stitch of pain since.
It was quite stressful on me, however. I felt terrible, and yet I've pulled him up like that a hundred times, as has Ryan and pretty much every other parent out there! I didn't yank on him, just pulled up, and that's what happened this time. I'm thinking that he must have been twisting or something at the same time, but still, I felt just awful. And of course, going through my mind is "what if they think I abuse my son?", because my Grandma just recently told me a story of some people she knows where that happened to them (their son had some sort of bleeding disorder that caused easy bruising, and their kids were taken away because they thought the parents were causing the bruises; the doctor didn't even look at other options, he basically took one look at the baby and called social services - they did get them back a week or so later, after testing revealed the truth, but it was SO traumatic on the whole family). Thankfully no one even questioned me on that. I was seriously nauseous the whole time, just thinking about the possibility of Jared being taken away. I do understand that abuse is very common and that doctors really have to watch for that, but there is such a thing as jumping to conclusions, like in the case of my Grandma's friends. So I was sick to my stomach with worry. But thank goodness all went well, and most importantly, Jared is fine and won't even remember this incident in a few days.