Watch your head, Miss.

Although I wouldn't consider Ramona to be a severely accident-prone child, when injuries do occur, they tend to happen to her forehead.

When she was about a year old, a friend of mine was watching her one evening while her ten-year-old daughter walked Ramona in a stroller in front of their house. At one point, she lost control of the stroller, tipping it forward and spilling Ramona onto the sidewalk. Thankfully, the tray was installed on the front of the stroller, because it appeared that it had blocked the force of the crash, leaving my baby with just a bruise on the right side of her forehead.

About six months later, after we moved to Iowa, we were invited to a friend's home for a dinner party. Ramona was happily playing with a four-year-old girl on the stairs while I was looking on. The older girl made a motion, most likely intended to guide her along up the steps, but instead it caused Ramona to lose her balance and roll most of the way down the flight of stairs, hitting her head on the tile floor below. She suffered no more than a goose egg from that incident, but she has never been fond of stairs since then.

Almost another six months have gone by, and Ramona was due for another head injury--but this one perhaps the most frightening, for me. While she was playing in her room with a 14-month old I was babysitting last week, she fell off of her bed. Since this is only an 18-inch drop, I initially wasn't too concerned, but when I went to pick her up, I saw that she had a significant gash on her forehead, and blood was already dripping down her face onto her shirt. She had landed right onto the metal knob of a nearby heating vent. As I attempted to clean the cut, I saw that it had gone all the way through and would require some stitching. Somehow, in my terror, I managed to temporarily patch up the wound, give her some ibuprofen, and call the other child's mother, who was willing to take her son while I drove Ramona to a doctor. Meanwhile, Ramona had stopped crying and was happily eating a sugar cookie I gave her, saying "I'm going to be okay." Had I told her that? I think I had.

While we waited for the doctor in the exam room of the urgent care center, Ramona seemed oblivious of the hole in her forehead, jabbering her usual mile-a-minute and pushing a wheeled chair back and forth. I paced about nervously, but occasionally smiled with relief to see my daughter in such good spirits.

Then it was time for the stitches. "Ramona, do you want to be a caterpillar? We're going to put you in a cocoon for a little bit, okay?" I told her as reassuringly as I could, eying the papoose she would be strapped to on the exam table. For the first time, Ramona looked concerned, and said she did not want to be a caterpillar. But I picked her up and laid her on the papoose while the nurses helped me velcro her arms in. "Once it's over, you can come out and fly like a butterfly," I said, barely hiding the quiver in my voice.

Ramona cried violently through the anesthetic and through each of the four stitches, while I held her little face and desperately sang her her favorite songs. She immediately quieted once she was out of the papoose and back in my arms, and willingly accepted some stickers for her bravery. For her, that was the end of the incident, and she seems to have forgotten all about it. For me? I think I am still recovering, but it helps that the stitches are gone now and the cut seems to be healing up nicely.