Drama

Today I had one of the most gut wrenching experiences I have ever had as a mother. I'll start at the beginning.

We didn't have much on our plates for today and my mother in law recently gave me a catalog of clothes she thought I would like. I Really really liked one shirt that was $15 dollars but shipping was going to be $11.95... kind of a rip off if you ask me. So I looked online for the closest store which was at grapevine mills and I figured today was a good day to make the trek over there so aiden and I did. We got there and all was fine, I went to get aiden out of his car seat which by the way he is still sitting backwards because ben and I haven't been able to bring ourselves to spend the money on the new more expensive big boy carseat he is ready for. So I get him out of his car seat as always and I hear a little pop or crack. Aiden immediately starts crying and I think I have popped his ankle. Not a huge deal but yes that can feel weird and uncomfortable if you have never experienced it before so I try to soothe him with his favorite toys and put him in his stroller and when we walk into the mall (he is still crying) I stop immediately at the great american cookie place to get him cookies. That makes everything better. I give him little pieces as we walk towards the store I came for and he seems to be calming down. We get to the store and I am not sure what happened...if it was because the stroller stopped moving or what but he starts FREAKING OUT! No cookie can stop the mass amount of tears and welping coming from him. I try to sit with him on a bench outside of the store and give him a bottle, he wants nothing to do with it. I try to let him walk a little bit and he won't even stand on his own just complete WAILING. At this point I am getting very nervous that something is really wrong because Aiden never just freaks out like this. Again I try to get him to stand on his own because all these thoughts start running through my head...has he broken something? Is his ankle sprained? did the bone crack? WHAT IS WRONG? Just complete hysteria. At this point I think ok something is definitely wrong and cookie is not helping, bottle is not helping...I'm gonna put him back in his stroller and leave the mall. So that's what I do but at this point he is so worked up he refuses to stay in his stroller, he is screaming and thrashing and trying to get out SO I scoop him up and carry him...I can't carry him and push the stroller at the same time because its zig zagging and I can't go as fast as I need to with a stroller that is zagging so I pick up the stroller with my other arm and carry both...stroller in one hand...aiden in the other. Aiden is screaming, tears pouring down his face. Now I am running and now I am crying. I don't know what's wrong but I can feel myself losing it. People are looking at me with either expressions of schock or sympathy but either way they are ALL looking at the girl with the screaming baby who is carrying a stroller, crying, and running through the mall. I get outside to my car and I have no idea what to do. Should I take aiden to a hospital? But I don't know what's wrong...Where's the nearest hospital? I don't know grapevine. Should I call someone to come help me? But who...no one I know lives in grapevine? So I do the only thing I can think of....assess the situation. I take off aiden's shoes, socks, jeans and sweater and try to get a better look at what could possible be wrong. His ankle looks red and a little puffy but I can tell that it's not broken. I throw my stroller and diaper bag into the backseat and put Aiden (who is now pretty much naked) under my arm and run back inside. I have a plastic baggie in my diaper bag full of cheerios which I throw out into the street and run up to the cookie place again and demand that the teenager put ice in the plastic baggie. Again I receive the shocked expression but he says no words just goes to get the ice. We go back outside with our baggie full of ice and I sit in the back seat of my car where I give aiden two doses of tylenol and hold ice on his ankle while I feed him cookie. After about 15 minutes of this he is calm and still. Ok time for assesment #2 can he stand? So I stand him up in the parking lot (with no shoes and shocks on) to see if he can bear weight on his ankle. He can, he walks happily out into the middle of the road. I scoop him back up now convinced that whatever is wrong is going to be ok. Maybe he just turned his ankle the wrong way and that mixed with the fact that he didn't want to go to the mall made him freak out? I really don't know. I go to put him back in his car seat to go home and he again starts to freak out. He doesn't want to be in his car seat. He has really started to hate it now. I don't blame him. But we can't live in the grapevine mills parking lot so I strap him in and hand him the last cookie to eat all by himself. Yes he has on a white t-shirt (and nothing else I might add). Yes his hands and mouth and everything are going to be covered in chocolate and cookie but I don't care....it makes him happy and gets him to be quiet so I can drive. I start driving in a daze, I have all these nerves in my stomach to where I think I am either going to throw up or pass out at any minute. I am not sure where I am heading and before I know it I am going the entire wrong way. I have spent all this time in super mom rescue mode that I haven't processed just how nervous and tense I was. I start driving towards bens work. I need someone to calm me down. So I get to ben's work and he takes aiden and examines him and yes his ankle looks a little red and a little swollen and his white t -shirt is completely covered in chocolate but aiden is calm and happy. I am the mess. Ben keeps asking me are YOU gonna be ok? Yes. I just have to un-knot my stomach. I don't think I have ever been that scared, confused, nervous, tense. So anyways we are both hom now and I am calming down and aiden seems to have recovered. I'm still not really sure what exactly happened. I am going to call our doctor and see if maybe they can just check him out tomorrow. I know he can bear weight on it and walk and so there can't be anything too terribly wrong or that would be too painful. I still want to be sure. So all of that made for a very dramatic afternoon. In hindsight, the $11.95 for shipping doesn't seem so bad. Wish I would have stayed home.