My little baby boy got his first stitch this past Wednesday. It has been 4 days since he split it and got it stitched. So, suffice to say that working from home is not going too well, when I have a little boy that needs a lot of supervision and hands on attention. My work isn’t being too accommodating either. I had to fight for my rights to reach a compromise. They expected me to lock my 4 year old in a room with me for 8 hours to be able to continue answering the phones and doing my job, while keeping him safe. I said that I wouldn’t keep him locked up and that is child abuse. He got hurt, because I am distracted with work and phones. I asked after he got hurt, because I can’t do work to its full capacity and keep my son safe. So, I still have to do my outbound calls where I can plan for him to be in the room with me and I have to be on the phones for 2 hours every morning. Two hours of my 4 year old locked in a room with me isn’t too bad. The volume isn’t very high in the morning and he is usually eating breakfast and just waking up. It was a compromise that I had to fight for, but I have it locked in until this COV-19 thing is over and done with.
Also, I am grateful to be working, but not at the cost of my child’s safety and well-being. My work is corporate and they care more about the customers than they do about their own employees. I had to be very strong and stand up for myself with not backing down with my request as I felt the HR rep really tried to push me into not changing anything. She offered a flex schedule, using PTO, reducing my hours. Here’s the thing: I am a single mom. I need to pay my bills. I’m not going to take unnecessary PTO. A flex schedule isn’t going to help me as I don’t have anyone to help me. My fiance is taking care of his daughter and his parents/grandparents. Plus, he is working remotely too. Even when he is here, he is working. I don’t have him with me during the work week to help watch my son. Before this pandemic, we were together a lot more. So, it is really irritating to me that work asked if there was someone else to watch my kid for a few hours. If there was, I wouldn’t be asking for reduced phone time and my son never would have gotten hurt. Once I asked who was going to pay for his hospital bill for him getting hurt and if he got hurt again, she starting being more understanding and asked if I could do 2 hours in the morning available for calls. I comprised because I know volume is low and he is just getting up. Plus, 2 hours is an okay amount of time to be stuck in a room with mommy and not be abuse.
I was logged into the phone on that fateful morning. I had just set him up for breakfast and went back to my computer to discuss a claim. That is when I heard him cry around 8:15 am and he walked right for me, arms up to be picked up. That’s when I noticed the blood. “Oh, SHIT.” I picked him up and grabbed some paper towels to hold to his face. I called Martin to rush over. I get the first aid kit and I message work that I am going to the ER. I call my boss and I punch out. I shut my computer down, all the while holding my crying screaming son who is bleeding. Martin gets here and takes him. I take pictures of his cut and send them to my mom, who tells me that he is going to need stitches. I call his doctor, who tells me the same. I call the ER to let them know we are coming. We take off and get to the ER about 9:30 ish.
I get screened in the tent with Dean. We get out temps taken and asked a lot of questions. I get my purse and his diaper bag searched. We wait in the waiting room about 5 to 10 minutes before going into the room. The nurse sees him and takes his vitals. They treat his cut with a cotton balls taped to his face that needs to sit for 20 min. It lasts 40 min before falling to the floor. It had antibiotics and numbing medication to be the stitch in. Well, my boy is active, so they have to give him a loopy nasal spray, twice and they wait about 30 to 40 minutes in-between each. They come back again to do the cotton ball. Now, it’s about 1pm and I am getting really tired. I ask Martin to come in to help. I haven’t eaten anything and I am running out of strength. Only 1 visitor with a patient. The doctor makes an exception, because Dean has autism and we need a strong person to help hold him down.
At this point, Dean has lost muscle coordination, but he is strong and trying to move around, placing all his weight on me. My arms are still SUPER sore right now. We hold him down for the stitch after the nurse swaddles Dead. Nurse has his head, Martin has his shoulders, and I have his legs. Dean lost a lot of blood that day. He needed to be cleaned up as it was everywhere, but the doctor got that stitch in!
After stopping at Wendy’s drive through for lunch, we make it back home at 2:30pm. We strap Dean in for his cheeseburger and place him in our bed as he still has no coordination. He then falls asleep for an hour, until we have to go pick up our groceries at Walmart. It was a long day and very traumatic. I had to take the next day off from work to recoup. I am so happy that my little boy is back to normal. We just have to keep an eye on it to watch it heal. It is a dissolvable stitch, so he doesn’t have to go back and get it removed. I went to a “clean” ER that is not taking any patients suspected of having the COV-19 as it is one of the designated ERs to be safe for uninfected patients.
He is so young to have gone through that. He simply tried to get out of his big boy chair and hit his lip on the edge of the table. Now, he will have breakfast in my room with me in the morning and I will sit with him with my laptop on lunch.
With Love,
Home Sweet Phoenix Cove 