Babies Bounce

Babies bounce. It's a cruel sounding euphemism describing the fact that babies are surprisingly resilient to falls. A lot of their bones are still made up of cartilage. And usually they don't fall from very high. So most of the time, when a little kid falls, they cry, brush themselves off and then keep going. Sometimes, over-reactive parents get involved and the equation changes.

We were toned out for a 2 year old fall with injuries. While normally calls involving kids amp me up just a touch this one didn't. We run calls like this all the time and very rarely is it anything serious.

When we arrived on scene we were met by a 6 year old girl. She led us to the upstairs apartment. Once inside we found her two year old brother screaming. His mom was holding him down on her bed. We slid into the room and the boy all but jumped into my engineers arms. Once he was out from under the confines his mother had set he became a happy kid. He was curious about our uniforms and babbled about his room. Acting like a healthy two year old.

Mom said she had not seen the fall but had found him at the base of the bed. I asked the sister what happened and she said that her brother had been jumping on the bed (probably not on his own) and he fell, feet first. I checked underneath the bed and found that it was indeed a trundle bed. The little guy had a small goose egg on his forehead with a straight scratch in it, which matched the edge of the metal frame.

He had evidently fallen feet first and then catapulted himself into the bed. The mother was still beside herself with panic. The entire time we were there my captain tried, in vain, to calm her down. She wanted to have her son taken to the hospital just to be sure nothing was wrong. He was happy until he had to be strapped into the car seat.