Categories: Business

My baby hit his head on the plane and it almost ruined our holidays

We were somewhere above Greenland when I heard my 10-month-old child starts to shout from the rear of the plane. My husband had taken her to the toilet to change his diaper while I stayed in our seats with our 7 -year -old child sleeping.

While the heads of the passengers began to turn to the bathroom door, I felt embarrassed but not necessarily panicked (still) – maybe he was just a crisis of anger on the change of layer.

Then, suddenly, my husband hurried from the aisle towards me, toddler in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he said in a low voice. “I didn’t want to do it. I hit her head.”

My heart was flowing.

He had been hospitalized before

We already had SSPT with regard to the health and safety of our baby Sunny. At only 5 months old, he had been hospitalized with a bad case of RSV. One night, his coughs were transformed into uprisings when his small chest was fighting to breathe, and we rushed to the emergency room. From there, they took him to an ambulance in a pediatric hospital, where they sucked his lungs.

I will never forget the look on the face of my 7 year old child as he looked at his little brother being taken to the ambulance. He begged that Sunny will come back.

Sunny returned, but I don’t think I have achieved until I was 30,000 feet above Greenland how tenuous I felt. Now 10 months old, he was a strong and cheerful baby – but he was still a baby. Fragile, helpless.

It was an accident but I panicked

While my husband placed it on my knees on this flight, Sunny looked at me with big wet eyes, shouting. “Head, Mom! Head!” shouted. I could see the skin of his forehead starting to change colors, forming a bright bump. I could have murdered my husband right away. I kept thinking, how could it be so negligent?

Of course, it was an accident that could have happened to anyone: a parent rushing to change a dirty all-little layer in a bathroom by plane too small. The parent’s spatial reasoning not being clear because, you know, being exhausted on a long international flight with a baby, it walks with speed and confidence through the bathroom door without any idea that in doing so, it suddenly strikes this baby on the setting.

It did not help that I worked as a parental editor at the time and that I was immersed daily in an excess of news and studies on everything related to baby. I knew very well how serious cranial trauma can be in children. I had read a story after the story on the head bumps that were badly turned.

And at the moment, while my sweet young child sobbed my knees, these stories were all that filled my head.

I watched it obsessively

While we landed in Iceland, our destination, I tried to monitor one of the revealing signs of distress in Sunny: crying constantly, vomiting several times, notable changes in body movements, sleep more than normal, or problems to wake up. Fortunately, Sunny was free from almost all of the above, the less sleep changes, which could easily be put in place on time difference.

However, I continued to be obsessed by the surveillance of Sunny through the whole of our trip – while we explored the geysers and the waterfalls and eaten hotcakes in cardamom and a fermented shark. I spent white nights in our airbnb listening to Sunny Breathe and annoying him by waking him up to make sure that he did, indeed, wake up. And, perhaps the worst of everything, I continued to blame and quietly feel my husband for the injury; I could barely watch him all week.

My children, however, forgot the injury in the second day in Reykjavik. Sunny was running, swam in thermal pools and played with Icelandic toddlers.

In the end, Sunny had a much better time during our trip than me, and the head injury ended up being sweeter than my psyche’s injury as a mom. The Sunny front bump had yellowed in a souvenir faded by the return flight. While our boys played Peek-A-Boo on their seats, shouting “Halló!” One to each other (roughly the only Icelandic they had picked up), I was finally ready to remember my husband’s hand again.

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William