Wednesday afternoon Maggie was rolling around the living room when her little forehead collided with the corner of the entertainment center. It was clear that she was going to have a decent sized bruise, but she didn’t cry for more than a few minutes, and even then, mostly because she was angry about our clumsy attempt to ice the little goose egg with a freezer pop. As sad as the little bruise was, I had to grit my teeth and accept that this was going to be the first of many. Newfound mobility brings with it all sorts of scars and superficial trauma and you just gotta deal. There were many times I looked at Jonas’ battered body and thought for sure someone was going to call CPS on me for beating the tar out of him. The thing is, I don’t need to beat him. He beats himself, but he is growing and healthy. So I didn’t dwell too much on Maggie’s first boo-boo.

Two hours later, while she was taking a long nap, I heard her start to sputter and choke and watched baby oatmeal shoot out of her little mouth and splatter over the length of the couch, projected in a way that only an infant can projectile vomit. Once she regained her breath, she began to scream, but was calmed very quickly. I worried that she had caught a virus, when almost immediately she snapped back to her usually cheerful self. A few minutes later she vomited again and I remembered that when people have a head injury and start vomiting a little bit later on it is usually because they have a concussion. And concussions, although usually not a big deal, can be accompanied with bleeding on the brain or full blown hemorrhaging*, which can be accompanied with death. I wrote a quick note for Chris, shoved Maggie into her car seat, dropped Jonas off at a friend’s house and drove to the ER.

I was not emotionally prepared to be taking Maggie to the ER. Jonas I had planned on taking in simply because he was such a daredevil. Even our doctor remarked once that she fully expected to see him in the cast clinic within six months. Had it been Jonas, I would have hardly been phased.

Our ER usually has a very, very long wait, but Maggie vomited shortly after we arrived and a man who was waiting picked up the phone to the triage nurse and said there was a baby out here who needed to be seen immediately. Amazingly, we were in triage in less than a minute. Maggie was acting completely normal, perky, and flirting with the nurses. She just had to stop being Little Miss Charming every few minutes to dry heave, then she would be right as rain again. After the doctor saw us he explained that since she was so little he didn’t want to give her a CT scan unless she really needed it because it involved a lot of x-rays, and a lot of x-rays can cause cancer. CANCER, people. Do not say the word cancer to someone in relation to her six month old. Just don’t. We decided to just “observe” her for awhile. I fed her to see if anything would stay down, which it didn’t. After about a half an hour of this the doctor decided a CT scan was probably a good idea. Great, I thought, she’s going to have bleeding on the brain and cancer now.

We walked into the scan room and I placed my tiny, sleeping baby onto the headrest of a massive machine. The technician gave me a forty pound lead vest to wear and turned the lights off. I had a weird flashback to a Mystery Science Theater episode. Surely, aliens would be arriving shortly. It was over quickly, and then we went to our room and found Chris there. We waited for the results together.

I really hate waiting. I had had a knot in my stomach since the minute Maggie started to vomit and it was just getting worse. Thinking that something could be wrong with your child is a really bad feeling. I was nervous and frightened. That doctor was taking a long time checking scan results he said would be ready shortly. The longer it took the more my thoughts spiraled out of control. What if there was bleeding on the brain? What if I should have brought her in hours ago, but was just too stupid to realize something was wrong? What if the reason things were taking so long was because there wasn’t any bleeding on the brain, but she had a brain tumor and was going to die and that was causing the unexplained puking? (Hey, the doctor is the one who got me thinking about cancer.) What if, what if, what if.

Finally, the doctor came back and said the scans were clear. His best guess about Maggie was a possible mild concussion. Since she was happy and hadn’t vomited for awhile, he let us go. We’d been there for five hours. I was emotionally exhausted from worry and starving because I hadn’t eaten since lunch, but I was fine, because Maggie was fine.

*Isn’t hemorrhage a freaky word? Bleeding is one thing. Bleeding you do when you get a paper cut, but HEMORRHAGE, that’s what happens in movies right before the heroine dies. “I’m sorry sir, your wife didn’t make it, she hemorrhaged after childbirth and we just couldn’t save her.” “Cause of death, massive internal hemorrhage.” Hemorrhage is just plain scary.