Munk,
Your kids love you and know you love them. Everything will be fine.
My wife and I hurt our firstborn when he was probably only 3 months old. He was in bed nursing and my wife wanted to adjust his position. She must have grasped the wrong part of his little arm because when she pulled, she felt a crunch.
He immediately began crying. Hard.
I was in bed as well and thought that it was a little strange. Nothing dramatic had happened. No violent actions or anything had occurred. I thought that perhaps he was just upset over having his feeding interrupted. I then came up with the brilliant idea that a good way to test and see if the little guy was ok or not was to place him on his tummy on the ground and see if anything seemed amiss.
Of course he yelled even harder.
We picked him back up and looked him over and we noticed that his right arm was hanging uselessly. At that point, we decided to go to the ER. That was the only good call we mad that morning.
It turned out that my wife had dislocated his elbow.
Upon hearing this from the doctor, we felt like absolute monsters. The doctor immediately informed us that we were't bad parents or horrible people. According to them, this sort of thing happens fairly commonly - so commonly they have a term for it: "Nursemaid's Elbow." They did a couple of moves and in no time at all, his little arm was working just fine.
Despite the reassurances from the medical staff, we felt lousy about our accident. Here was this little baby that we wanted to protect from all harm and yet we were the ones to hurt him.
Two years have passed and we've all gotten over it. I suspect that the little guy doesn't even remember the incident. We just make sure we show him lots of love and he returns it in spades. Good kid.
The point of my story is that kids are resiliant and a lot tougher than we are. Sometimes I think the parents have a rougher time than the kids during injuries. Hang in there and just hug and kiss your kids. I'm thinking about you and wish you the very best. Your family is lucky to have you as a daddy and husband.
David
