The Guaranteed Method for Breaking a Mother's Heart

Thursday, January 26, 2012, 6:50pm is a date that will be forever burned in my memory.

It is a time I will remember with absolute dread. It will make me cry all over again just to think of it. 

Okay, maybe not. I'm not quite that dramatic. I'll remember the experience but not the date. And I'm not crying. At least not yet.



Surprisingly, actually, I kept myself from crying during the whole experience. Though it did take a bit of self control at one point because I was about ready to burst right into tears. Little Livie and I would have been a salt water fountain to see, I tell ya.

Why all the dramatics?

Because of this:

 See? Doesn't that just break your heart to even see it?

Whew. I'm still not crying. We're doing good. 

Last Thursday Livie had her first experience with something hot. I'm sure all kids have some kind of experience related to this {please tell me I'm right on that assumption} but it's something no mother ever wants to actually happen.

We had pizza for dinner Thursday night. When we sat down to eat we turned the oven off, but you know it doesn't cool off as quickly as it heats up. When we finished eating Dan and I began cleaning up dinner and were quite involved in an important discussion regarding snow, ice and dress boots {that's a story for another day}. I was just finishing my story when we heard Livie scream. We both turned to see her hand stuck in the oven door. Perhaps I should say that our oven has about a half inch space between the actual oven and the door. It is closed and sealed but that space is lined with metal {great idea, right?}. Livie had stuck her hand into that space multiple times, even when the oven was on, and had never gotten burned. {I never really looked at it and didn't realize it was lined with metal. Otherwise she would never have been playing in that crack to begin with.} This time though, she was getting burned. We jumped into action. I thought she was just in shock with being burned and couldn't think to pull her hand out. I tried to pull it out for her and realized it was stuck. Not only had she put her fingers into the crack and had them pressed against the hot metal, she also somehow wedged them into the door and had gotten stuck. We had to open the oven door to get her hand out.

Her index and middle fingers blistered up like this immediately. What you can't see in this photo is that she also had a blister on the back side of her middle finger and had a blister on her ring finger. As soon as we got her away from the oven, I started putting her hand under cold water while Dan called a doctor. The doc told us to just keep it in cold water.

For about an hour she was inconsolable. It was the worst hour of my life. For the first time in my life, I really, fully understood the desire to take away someone's pain. I wanted so badly to take those blisters from Livie's fingers and put them on my own. I would have gladly done it without any hesitation. It broke my heart to listen to her screaming and crying in pain and know there wasn't a thing I could do to take that pain away.

For awhile we just would put her hand under the tap while we had the cold water running. We finally decided to put some cold water in a pitcher and she would dip her hand into the water whenever it started to burn again and take it out when she needed a break. {That's why her hand looks all wet in the photo - she had just pulled it out of the water.} She also decided it was fun to lick her fingers after they had been in the water. I'm still not sure why she liked that but she ended up pretty wet before she went to bed. She had finally calmed down about the time we got the pitcher of water and stayed pretty calm for the next half hour or so.

Around 8:30 I called my mom and talked to her about an essential oil called Lavender. I had a bottle of it but wasn't sure what to do with it. My mom helped me out to know what to do for Livie and we applied some lavender oil to Livie's burns and then wrapped them in gauze. She really hated having her fingers wrapped up and it started the hysterics up again. I'm sure it also a little painful and it broke our hearts all over again. We were able to get her to calm down pretty quick thanks to her bottle {I was actually glad she still drinks one at nights!} and finally crashed a little after 9.

Here she is the next day eating her breakfast.
 
Even though she hated that bandage we made her keep it on most of the day. And I'm happy to say that the burns haven't seemed to bother her since the night they happened. She woke up Friday morning happy as punch and went about doing all the things she usually does without even thinking about her fingers. That made me glad.

Currently all of her blisters have popped so we have her fingers bandaged up again so that we can put Neosporin on them and keep infection out. When we take the bandage off, I'll have to take another photo.