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That Was Supposed to be Easy

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By marydalene

So, you may remember, Sarah had a recent addition of two more stitches.

Well, what goes in must come out. And instead of taking her back to the InstaCare to get her stitches out (or to the pediatrician’s office), we decided to just take them out ourselves. There were only two, they were easy to get to and they clearly weren’t infected or had other problems.

What we didn’t count on was the patient.

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This is pre-stitches removal. Happy as a clam with her princess Band-Aid and fresh off of eating a yummy Tex Mex Salad dinner.

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And this is her, not even five minutes later, and Jared had barely even touched her. So I tried to come over and help.

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She was in hysterics. Every time we so much as even touched the stitches (barely moving them at all) she freaked out. Or Jared would barely grab it and move them a hair and she would yank her lips open and wail some more. Sigh. The whole reason we went through the ordeal of two measly stitches was because of the cut’s location and penchant for easily breaking open. And that same location also hindered us in the stitches removal. There are just too many muscles by the mouth and it wasn’t easy for her to stay still. Seriously, she was freaking out so much she almost made herself vomit.

Ah, the joys of having a girl.

So we took a break: got jammies on, read scriptures, did family prayers and sent the oldest off to bed. Jared took the youngest, and while initially I was going to wait for Jared to be done, I decided to go ahead and see if I could do it by myself, but with some changes.

First, I let her snuggle into my pillow and put my blanket on her. (She loves to snuggle under blankets year round.) Then I talked her through every step as I was doing it. When she wanted to talk, I let her and pulled the tweezers away. And I let her know when I was going to move the stitch I was working on and that it likely would hurt a little bit.

It seemed to work. It still took me about 30 minutes, but I was able to successfully remove them.

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In all, it probably took about 2 1/2 hours from start to finish to get them out (including the break time in-between sessions). And all that for two measly little stitches.

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Good grief. I must really love my daughter.

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