Bloody Noses
If you decided to come meet me at the local McDonald’s PlayPlace how could you recognize my child? Oh, he’ll be the one covered in blood, zooming through the various tunnels and slides dripping type A negative to mark his path. Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure it is clean blood, hepatitis and HIV free (I haven’t caught him sharing needles or engaging in unsafe sex lately). I’ll be the mother standing helplessly with a wet wipe hoping to get him cleaned up, but unable to catch him.
Jonas has been getting bloody noses again. He had one yesterday and another today. Once he gets one he bleeds off and on for a month. I have no idea why. Sometimes he actually gets bumped and sometimes they are completely spontaneous. Today’s event caught me totally off guard. He came down from the tunnels to eat some french fries when I noticed he had blood all over his arm. I started cleaning him up, trying to figure out if he had picked a scab or cut himself somehow, but I couldn’t find the source of the blood until he used his arm as a Kleenex again and wiped his nasty, dripping schnoz. As soon as I went to help his nose, which had mostly bled out while he was playing, he zoomed away from me and went back up into the maze of tunnels. Bloody noses don’t phase Jonas a bit. They are only a minor irritation and only because I usually interrupt whatever he is doing to clean him up.
I have never had a bloody nose. I am pretty sure he got this from his dad. Chris gets bloody noses at random and, like his son, barely notices. I always notice! Imagine being a young bride, waking up in the morning and looking over at your new husband who is laying in the bed next to you, drenched in his own blood. I swear I though he was dead. At any rate he ruined our sheets.
The first time Jonas got a bloody nose he was about twenty months old. I wasn’t home. Chris said Jonas tripped, landed on his face, and started to bleed. Better Chris dealing with it than me I figured. I had no idea what to do for a nosebleed, having never had one myself.
The following day marked one of the darkest days in my career as a mother. I was pregnant, very sick, running on almost no sleep, and Jonas had woken me up by taking off his diaper and tracking poop all over the cream carpet. He then started to throw huge tantrums. After about two hours of these colossal meltdowns interspersed with trips to the bathroom so I could vomit up the lining of my empty stomach, I cupped my hand over his screaming little mouth in a desperate attempt to get him to shut up. In retrospect, I didn’t do this too hard. I certainly didn’t smack him a smack worthy of any real concern, but I did aim just a wee bit too high. I bumped his nose. His sensitive little nose, with barely closed off, thin as phyllo dough veins and capillaries. Instantly it started bleeding like I’d turned on a faucet. I couldn’t believe it. I had given my child, my dear little baby boy, a bloody nose. I was unfit to be a mother. I had no idea how to fix a bloody nose. I was ready to call CPS on myself.
He was dripping blood all over himself, the carpet, me and my bed. And screaming. Not because of the blood, but because he wasn’t finished with the previous fit of temper. I grabbed a roll of toilet paper and tried to stem the bleeding. Was it tip the head forward or tip the head back? What exactly was I supposed to pinch? Which position would make him choke on the blood and die? Which one would make him swallow the blood and throw it up? Even if I did stumble upon the correct blood stopping stance was there any way to get him to stay in that position? Was there anything I could do to make the bleeding stop? I was literally sitting on the floor shaking, trying to deal with the blood and the guilt of having caused it, and the morning sickness that was making me dry heave every time I looked at him.
I really believe that God isn’t going to give you more than you can handle. He knows your limits. And I was at mine. At this moment, Chris walked in the door. He was home for lunch. It was a totally off schedule lunch. He rarely came home to eat. But there he was. My knight in shining camouflage.
He took Jonas, had the blood stopped in a matter of seconds and listened to me sob and confess that I was a horrible mother. I had made our child bleed his own blood. He gently explained to me that it doesn’t take much to start a bloody nose bleeding again.
He was right. I think Jonas had about six more bloody noses in the next four days. Each time I became more blasé toward the entire situation. Now when he starts bleeding, I just strip him down, toss him in the tub and figure as long as he doesn’t pass out he’s probably fine. I’ve come along way, baby.
