Become A Mother & Get Paranoia & Anxiety at No Extra Charge

As many first time mums reading this would agree, paranoia and anxiety are the unsought gifts that accompany the arrival of your bundle of joy. In fact, I am a perfect example of a paranoid first-time-mommy. Before being a mother I had promised to myself that I shall be a cool mom who would not get affected by 'trivial' day-to-day matters pertaining to my child (read child getting hurt/getting an injection / crying his lungs out etc.etc.) And so 9 months of my motherhood passed rather peacefully except for one single bout of hysteria caused by incessant tears of my little boy.

However, just recently my resolutions were shredded to bits when my 9.5 months son decided to explore the boundaries of our bed where I had put him to sleep. On this particular day, I was feeling extremely proud of the fact that I had managed to put him to sleep in 5 minutes flat. Little was I to know that my little brat was anything but asleep. As I went away, he decided to crawl near the precipice of our 3 feet high bed and THUMP!, followed by a “waah” which would make any mom's heart stop.

What I Face Once Became First-time Mother?

On rushing to the bedroom I found the worst of my nightmares coming true. My brave boy was lying on the hard floor and crying his guts out. Coming from a doctor’s family can prove to be mentally exhausting (especially if one is not a doctor oneself but confidently indulges in self-diagnosis every now and then). And for someone who is an ardent follower of “Grey’s Anatomy”, all I could think of was McDreamy doing neurosurgery on my little one because of a clot!

Oh yeah, even during such times I can only think of similar situations in my favorite serials. After calming him down, I checked for any physical injury and to my dismay (yes you read it right), I could NOT find any swelling. No physical hurt can mean there is an internal injury, right!

The Internet, by the way, is of no help during these times. In fact, Dr. Google only adds to your worries with some really weird symptoms of internal head injuries in babies (written by people who are NOT neurosurgeons by the way)! Read here's what I found -  

1. The baby must not cry for more than 20 minutes - Oh why was I not checking how long my son cried! Silly me should have looked at the clock instead of trying to calm him down.
2. Awaken the baby to check whether he wakes up as usual or does not wake up at all - My poor child who wanted some sleep was not allowed any rest by his internet savvy mom who kept poking and prodding him every half hour to check whether all was well! Had he been able to speak he would have told me to shut it and leave him in peace, I am so sure of that!
3. Check if the baby is feeling nauseous, dizzy or vomits - Yeah right. A 9-month-old baby sure can understand if he is feeling dizzy or nauseous and can also let his mum know!

Needless to add, the next day, my son was subjected to tight scrutiny for every action of his. Why is he crying so much? Why is he blabbering? Why is he crawling? Oh, and why is he pooping so much? No internal injuries in the brain I hope!

And yes, I have to add here that I am a graduate in SCIENCE!!

The poor guy had a bewildered expression on his face and am sure he thought he has one crazy mother who kept giving him weird stares through the day. Thankfully the 24 hour period of total craziness was over soon. All's well that ends well, except for the impression I left on my darling son. “Welcome to Motherhood” - said a dear friend when she heard of the whole episode.
Moral of the story – See a doctor as soon as possible and yes, some of the symptoms of internal injuries in the brain include bleeding through nose or ears and the baby not crying at all after the fall.