Elbow noodles

As a brand new parent, you treat your new baby like glass. You cringe as you watch the seasoned nurse scrubbing the gunk out of that china doll's hair like it's motor oil in her fingernails. You take as much time as you need when you transfer that new bundle of joy to the arms of someone probably just as careful.

Meanwhile, that baby's older siblings are holding that baby doll- you lovingly bought to help prepare them for their new little addition- by the ankle, as it's head bumps and scrapes every inch of the path they walk... probably butt-naked... with marker on it's face... and a fresh hair cut.

That new parent slowly learns that their baby isn't quite so fragile. As for big brother or sister learning to take more care? Yeah..... that's gonna take some time.

Saturday evening Iwa was trying to help Leilea onto the Love Sac and hurt her arm. Leilea stopped crying but held that arm, elbow bent 90 degrees, still at her side. We thought maybe it was the shoulder but she lifted it without pain and even extended her arm.

We knew something was wrong when she sat on John's lap for over half an hour.

Leilea's not a spectator.

(meanwhile, Iwa felt so bad she got a pillow and hid under the dining room table. I had to crawl under there and talk to her to get her out. After that, Leilea kept saying, "Eba... eba" and giving her hugs and Iwa sat with her and petted her head. It was so sweet, I wanted to cry.)

We called the nurse, took her in and it was just a dislocated elbow. I mean, "just" to us. I know it hurt like crazy- especially when they corrected it, but it was a quick easy fix with no follow up or recovery. The doctor even showed me the maneuver if it ever happens again.

When we got home, I, being the person I am, Googled "toddler dislocated elbow" and found out all about it.

If websites like BabyCenter, WebMd, and Wikipedia gave medical degrees, I'd be one of the first in line.

As it turns out, a dislocated elbow, also called nursemaid's elbow, is most common in the left arms of girls ages 1-3. I thought about what data they had to collect to get a statistic so specific and wondered why that's what they found. Then I read the part where it happens a lot when someone is holding the hand of the child and the child tries to get away or throw themselves on the floor in a tantrum... and it made more sense.

...but I also wondered about the cases they studied for the statistic. I wondered that if they went back to the cases and looked at the causes, how many older siblings there were that caused the injury.

And of THOSE cases, I wondered just how many of those older siblings had somewhere buried in their closet a 1-3 year old baby doll, scalped, butt-naked, with road rash on it's forehead, marker on it's face, and more love than any toy had ever known.