There are now two new items on my list of things so bad that I wouldn't wish them on anyone, ever: The feeling you get when your baby screams out in fear and pain and the feeling you get sitting with your baby in an emergency room.

Last night, Harper took a pretty bad fall. For months, we've fed him his dinner with him sitting in his bouncy seat on the kitchen table (never again). Last night, Byrne took on dinner duty so I could get some work done. He put Harper in the seat and turned his back for the proverbial second to grab Harper's dinner when we both heard a huge crash and a cry unlike any we'd heard before. Harper had apparently leaned over sideways, toppling off the table (still strapped into the seat) onto some bags of groceries on the floor. The groceries may indeed have cushioned his fall a bit, but he smacked his face on some not-so-soft purchases, cutting his nose and outer eye. I was about one atom away from ceasing to exist altogether.

After a few minutes of terror-induced panic, we were on our way to Children's Hospital (and thanking God that we live just 5 minutes from a top-notch pediatric ER). We felt a little better as Harper smiled and cooed while the triage nurse examined him. But then there was talk of keeping him for observation and possibly a CT scan. We were told to not feed him in case he needed to be sedated. The tally: two distruaght parents and one hurt, hungry, tired baby.

They finally got us into a room where an intern examined him and said he seemed fine but that she wanted to check with the attending due to the "severity of the fall." The attending agreed that there didn't seem to be any signs of major trauma and gave us two choices: Hang out for another two hours for observation (most problems from head injuries crop up within four hours of the incident) or send him in for the CT scan. Since Harper would need to be sedated and would encounter radiation with the scan, she recommended observation first. I was finally allowed to feed him, so we lay down together in the tiny kid-sized hospital bed. Byrne dimmed the lights and I sang some of our bedtime songs, and soon Harper was snoozing away, snuggled against his Mama. Byrne and I sat in silence, scrutinizing his every breath, rousing him every now and again to make sure he was responsive, and listening to the sounds of the ER: babies crying; kids whining with pain; pages for nurses, doctors and social workers; stretchers rolling by; the occasional person running. It was the longest one and a half hours in the history of the world.

In the end, we were discharged, with instructions to follow up with our regular pediatrician in the morning. Harper slept in Mama and Dad's bed and woke up to nurse a little more than usual, but that was just fine with Mama. He rose with a smile and has been giggling and babbling ever since. He's sporting a little cut on his nose and is working on his first shiner below his left eye. The doctors say he won't have a scar. Unfortunately, they can't make the same assurance for his parents.