Last night, on Saturday, we made the quick decision to go to Aaron's parents' ward the today. Aunt Katie already lives in their ward and both Uncle David and Aunt Carmen and their respective kids were visiting, so we drove down to spend Church with them. It started out a pretty perfect day: everyone was showered and dressed early, the morning went smoothly, Cole even fell asleep on the way!
I wanted to keep him napping as long as possible, so I carefully removed him from the van and made my way to the chapel, reclining in the pew so that he could sleep with his head by my chin. He continued sleeping through songs and ward business, waking during the Sacrament hymn. The bread was blessed and passed and the blessing over the water was said. When the water came to our bench, I watched as it was passed along my brother in law's family, who then held the tray for me to partake. I took a cup for Cole, still sitting on my lap and as I went to help him drink, I realized there was a stream of blood on my arm flowing from his nose.
I can't express how fast thoughts flew through my head. It felt like there was a lot going on in my mind, but things happened quickly. I nudged Aaron on my other side and he reached to get the wipes for me. In retrospect I should have taken the bloodied cup out with me and trashed it elsewhere, but my first thought was to stop the flow from his nose, so I dropped it into the bottom of the tray like the others. Several family members commented to me later that it changed how the tray looked - Aaron said it looked like kool-aid through the bottoms of the clear plastic cups. Once the tray passed me (in my rush for Cole, I didn't even get a cup for me and felt oddly lopsided the remainder of the day), I kept the wipe which Aaron had handed me over Cole's face and awkwardly made my way past family members to get out.
I found out very quickly that a two-year-old boy does not want his head held still with a hand and tissue clamped over his nose. He kept swinging his head around, getting blood on both of us; probably getting it other places I didn't stop to notice at the time, too. I kept him cuddled to me, facing forward, as I hurried down the hall to the family bathroom. A couple of concerned people offered help as I shut the bathroom door. I sat him on the sink and just put tissue after tissue over his nose, holding it when he'd let me and wiping when he wouldn't. We spent maybe five minutes in the bathroom this way, though it felt much longer.
Cole's nose was still bleeding when we left the bathroom, but I felt we no longer needed the sink, so I grabbed several paper towels and tissues and went to an empty room nearby. One of the kind sisters who'd offered assistance earlier was still in the hall with her own baby to rock and she chatted with me while I ran out of paper towels and my toddler got increasingly annoyed with my attempts to keep blood off his clothing and the rest of the room. She got me more tissue and offered an old burp cloth, saying it'd soak up more and be softer on his face, and that she didn't need so many anyway. What a sweet woman!
After another five minutes or so, his nose finally stopped. It never had been gushing, just bleeding persistently. It had been hard to stay calm for him while I felt like running pell-mell back to the chapel for my keys and taking him to an urgent care. When I felt like his nose was truly done, I took him into the women's restroom and I stripped his shirt and vest off. I rinsed several bloody spots out of his shirt and vest, deciding that, since they were black, the pants could escape notice for the remainder of the block. We went back into the chapel during a talk and his nose was completely fine after that.
It was a startling and confusing and scary ordeal. I still have no idea what started the bleeding; the woman who chatted with me said it could be the dry air, but I'm not sure that's it, because it was particularly humid that morning. Whatever it was, it had me watching him very carefully through the remainder of the talks and jumpily watching the nursery door for the next two hours. Sometimes being a mom takes more out of you emotionally and mentally than it does physically.
I wrote briefly about this on Facebook, but I wanted to remember the entire experience.
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