i have debated posting about this but we've had so many phone calls from people who don't know the end of the story that i thought it would be a good idea. so here we go:

i went to north carolina to help a jaime and wendy with their 2 month twins for 2 weeks. (yes, crazy in itself, i know!) it's about 5 hrs from my house. when we got there, i went to get abby out of her carseat and into the ergo. i put her on my left side to get her in and was putting my right strap onto my right shoulder and she kicked/stretched and when she did, my left arm slipped and she fell backwards, flipped in mid-air and landed on the gravel face first. i (freaking out!) immeadiately picked her up. she was bleeding pretty badly from her mouth and her face was bleeding on her forehead, nose, cheek and chin. i ran to find my friend and she drove me to the closest ER which happened to be a po-dunk little place but had adequate equipment for a CT Scan. so the dr did the CT Scan and said she had bleeding on the brain (subdural hematoma) with old and new blood. that meant that there was this injury and a previous injury that looked like it was from 4-6 days ago. this of course baffled me completely b/c i had no idea where she would have gotten an injury like that! the dr there said that she would need to be transported to the closest children's hospital to be looked at there, with possible surgery. so we were transported by ambulance to Brenner's Children's Hospital inside Wake Forest Medical Center in Winston-Salem, NC. they put us in the ER there and had 2 neurosurgeons look at her CT Scan. they both confirmed that there was, in fact, 2 seperate injuries in her head, and so CPS and the Child Abuse Drs had to be brought in. abby was admitted and observed, all the while, they were trying to get the pediatric neurological radiologist to look at the Scan. also they were doing full skeletal x-rays and head/neck x-rays looking for other signs of abuse: fractures, breaks, etc. they did a complete physical exam looking for abuse, including sexual. (that was the hardest for me --- they did all this in front of me.) we had interviews with the hospital social worker and 2 Child Abuse Drs. finally the pediatric neurological radiologist read the scan and said that it was misread: children's heads/brains are very different in sustaining injuries than adult's and there was only 1 injury present and that was the fall on tuesday. this cleared us of all abuse allegations and we were sent home.

abby is doing well. she is and has been acting normally. she is very tired, as you would expect, but is doing well. she did vomit yesterday morning all over me (and i didn't freak out!!!!!) which was a concern for a minute, but it was a one time thing so they weren't too concerned. it will take approximately 2 weeks for the subdural hematoma to absorb back into her system. there is no treatment or medications that she needs. she does need to be re-evalutated by a pediatric neurosurgeon and opthamologist here within a week or so just to make sure everything is healing properly.

honestly this was the absolute scariest thing i've ever been through. robert was not with me until 11pm on tuesday. he and my mom drove up from atlanta as soon as i called them to tell them that she had bleeding on the brain. the drs were all fabulous - no one ever accused me of abuse, but they had check into it by law. now i am very nervous when i hold her and walk but i HAVE to do it. i am making myself. i'm not beating myself up about it - there was nothing i could do. but i do relive her falling over and over. i watched it happen -- it was very quick but felt like slow motion. so i see it all the time. abby has only wanted me to hold her for the majority of the time. but she has stayed my happy little girl, playing and loving on everyone around her. in fact, during one of her x-ray sessions, she was strapped down completely to a board and flipped on her side (not very comfortable) and she was laughing with the technicians who were doing the x-rays!

so that's basically it. i'm glad it's over and i'm VERY glad that she is okay. we had so many people praying for us - literally within 2 hrs the whole salvation army world knew about it. i honestly believe that the Lord kept my daughter safe and i give Him all the praise for doing just that. i believe that this happened for a reason and that through this He will be glorified.here are pictures of her for your viewing...pleasure?? again, thank you all for your thoughts/prayers! and to top all this off, in the middle of all this, she got her first tooth!!! wow....