[Emergency Room]

Our first trip to the ER.  Everyone's fine and it was a lot of drama for a little tiny thing.  M was holding little miss {A}, she was sleeping.  Nellie dog was laying next to them.  Elvis (one of the evil cats we own) came up to the couch to instigate a fight with Nellie.  Apparently Nellie looked at him the wrong way and Elvis pounced, bounding off {A}'s arm with his nasty sharp claws.  She started screaming (of course).  We took her clothes off and looked for a wound.  Nothing.  We couldn't see where he landed, no scratch.  A little while later M was feeding her and noticed the scratch.  F***ing great.  Our two month old preemie had a nasty scratch.

After hunting down the cat and scaring the pee out of him, we called the pediatrician's after hours line.  The nurse said that since the claw (sick) broke the skin, she was 2 months old and a preemie, we needed to be seen.  We loaded the babes into the car (I sat in the back with them to make sure she didn't have some weird reaction) and we went to Children's.  I should mention, its 11pm.  Here I am a first time Momma with a sleepy, pissed off Daddy and two sweet sleeping babies-one of which had a big icky scratch on her precious little arm.  We get into the waiting room and theres a ridiculous family taking WAY too long to check in.  I'm nervous, Dr Google made sure of that, and I'm anxious to see what we're in for with this scratch.

We get taken back, passing rooms where babies are crying, young kids are getting stitches and what looks to be a 10-12 year old getting an IV-shivers.  The rooms are bright and comfortable.  Zoo animal wall paper borders the upper quadrant of the walls, which are a cheery yellow.  There's a big comfy chair and a hospital gurney in the room.  Baby {A}(who's now asleep) and I plant ourselves in the big comfy chair while M sits next to us and {M} sleeps soundly in his car seat.

The Dr comes in quickly, an absolutely precious woman probably not much older than us.  She looks at our sweet girl's arm, tells us how beautiful she is (duh) and commends us for cleaning it at home like we did.  She thinks its relatively minor, but that she's glad we came in to have it checked out.  She thinks the risk of infection is low and she doesn't believe we need to start unnecessary antibiotics at this time because they can be particularly nasty for babies this young and studies show preemptive antibiotics don't do much to prevent infection unless its already set in.  Basically, lets wait to see if she even needs it.  Whew!

Bo, the male nurse we loved, came back in to clean {A}'s arm a bit more thoroughly.  I imagine it stung because she fussed a bit while Bo worked.  When it was over, Daddy swooped his sweet baby girl up and whispered lovies to her to calm her down.  She was finally soothed and fell asleep.  We loaded her up and headed home.  So far she's doing great, we hope the momentum continues :)