He Makes Her Lay Down In Purple Pastures

Now you know how this story ends, I'll start from the beginning. Last Thursday evening, after returning from a wonderfully exciting day of visiting with a close friend and playmates, I sat down to rest. The entire week had been packed, and this last visit marked the end of a fun but tiring affair. Ken had been away in Tennessee for the week, and I was glad to be near the end of flying solo.

The children, eager to be out of the long car ride back, got out their wiggles chasing each other around the house and swinging Faith's blankies at each other. Faith was just as happy to be free from car seat restraints and was giggling with her older siblings trying to keep up. As the children chased each other up the stairs, Faith followed. Too tired to object, and enjoying her visible joy in being a part of it all, I watched from my chair as she climbed up the stairs. I saw her little legs disappear as she moved beyond the rails and the wall hid her view. She was half way up the stairs, when she encountered her two blankets that Grace and Jack had left on the stairs.

What happened then, we'll never know. The next thing I heard was her gasp, as she lost her balance and began a slow tumble down our steep staircase. I saw her reappear tumbling backwards till she landed on the floor. It was a scary fall, but it was slow enough that it seemed she would be ok. In a matter of minutes I realized she was crying over more than fright. She did not wish to stand, and held her foot up refusing to have any pressure placed underneath it. Her right foot grew red and hot, and it appeared that she might have twisted her ankle during the fall.

It took her 30 minutes to stop crying and complaining. Her usual comforts didn't perform their magic. I called Ken and employed his resources to look up broken bones in infants on the Internet while I focused on Faith. After going through it together, it still seemed like she had twisted her ankle, and the swelling around her ankle was small. After an hour, the hot to the touch skin and redness had subsided. I decided to wait until the morning to see if the swelling had increased, or if there was bruising, or any other further signs.

Long story short, Faith got quickly used to standing on her left foot and keeping her right foot bent off the ground, but most noticeably, she went back to a life of crawling. Her foot had a small amount of swelling, but no change from the date of injury. However, after still refusing to stand or put pressure on her foot four days later and with no improvement, it was clearly time to take her in.

Somewhere in my mind I always thought that babies' bones were less brittle than adults. That since they were new and still growing, there was more cartilage involved and they had more bend to them (which is true in a sense). What I didn't know, until that visit, is that babies' bones are actually more likely to fracture than for a ligament to sprain. Bottom line, babies have stronger muscles than bones. I was given a referral to a sports medicine doctor for X-Rays in the morning.


Then things turned from bad to worse. Faith got the royal puke flu that night. She went through numerous bedding and clothes changes, and she and I got very little sleep as all she wanted to do was sleep on my chest, anything farther away was unacceptable. I felt so bad for her, she couldn't keep even water down until late afternoon.

The whole family headed out in support of Faith that morning. And we all hoped and prayed for the best. Unfortunately, it was not Faith's day. The X-Ray showed that Faith had broken and bent her fibula (lower leg bone on the inside of your leg) just above her ankle. It wasn't a giant break, but it was clearly broken. So our little Faith became our first family trauma after three children. We all watched as the doctor set a half cast around her leg and secured it with an ace bandage.

Grace kept the conversation light. The doctor had given Jack a small wet cast sample to observe how it slowly would harden. As he was describing how the cast would harden, Grace looked directly at the doctor and said, "How do YOU know?" As if he had no authority. We all bust out laughing, and the doctor wittily informed Grace he had gone to school for sixteen years to learn those types of things.

The rest of the day was a blur with little sleep under our belt, and nausea to boot. Our little girl is much better today, and is getting used to her little cast which she will need to wear for four weeks. It has slowed her down which is a huge test for mobile Faith. She is learning to be still, and be even cuter. We are so glad she is on her way to recovery. And somehow, even weighed down with a cast, she still manages to be a blur in my camera lens.


And now I must end this post with a cliff hanger. We have a number of life changing events to announce in the next week. There is more than one reason why I have been so blog-silent as of late. The changes are uber-exciting, but I don't like to blog about it until I'm quite sure it is true. Stay tuned in the coming week...