How early did your kid need stitches? Or otherwise break themselves?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Nine months. VunderKind was learning to walk, and toddling over to me. He fell and hit his forehead on the leg of the chair I was sitting in, cutting it open. This left me in an immediate quandary, because I didn’t know if I should tend to his blood or slap my wife across the mouth because of her Hollywood silver screen hysterical fit. I ended it with the loudest SHUT UP! I ever yelled in my life.

As far as the stitches went, he took 6 ultra small sutures from a plastic surgeon for a quarter inch laceration. He’s now 26, and I have to look real hard to see the scar.

22

My older daughter (BloodyL) slammed the car door on her own hand, cutting off the end of her left ring finger when she was six. It was reattached and now at 24 she barely has a scar. When she was eight she sat on a double-eyed needle and it went into the bone. It couldn’t be pulled out. They had to go in and remove it so that made a couple stitches. So far so good on her 9 year old sister.

23

I don’t have little ones yet, but the story of my first stitches is one of those dramatic family stories that we all laugh about now, and was probably terrifying to live through.

My parents had just bought their first house. My aunt was at the new house with three-year-old me, while my parents were taking care of some things at the rental. I had a bladder infection and was pretty sick - on top of all this, my mom was also pregnant with my sister.

At some point, I, being three and sick, was being underfoot while she was doing something near the wall, and she bumped me, which caused me to double over, and hit my head on the wall, which promptly opened up and started bleeding all over. My aunt flipped. She tried to call my parents, but the phone had already been disconnected at the rental place. She called my grandmother, who was a nurse, and grandma told her to take me to the ER, and she would go over to my parent’s rental place.

My aunt left a hastily-scrawled note (which said something along the lines of “took Sehmket to ER”), and went to Hospital A (which was closer). My grandmother went to the rental, and no one was there, my parents had left to come to the house during that interval. So, grandma goes to the house, but my parents beat her there. My parents come in to find no one there, and a barely-legible note, and they freak and start driving to Hospital B, which is where my grandmother worked at the time. My grandmother sees their car driving out of the neighborhood, and realizes they are going the wrong way, so she starts driving aggressively to catch up to them… which she does, and then, not knowing what to do, starts honking at them. I can’t even imagine the picture of my dad driving, my pregnant mom half-hysterical in the passenger seat, and my grandmother laying on the horn behind them.

They eventually all group up and go to Hospital A, where they find my aunt, and me. I hadn’t even needed much - they gave me two stitches, and from the way my grandmother rolls her eyes, I think that was out of pity for my aunt thinking she’d broken her sick niece.

24

Well, my daughter had a collapsed lung at just under 24 hours old, but I don’t think that’s what you’re asking about (as she was a preemie in the NICU at the time) ;).

My son was just over 4, at preschool, when he came up to the teacher and said his arm was hurt and asked her to kiss it better. She did, and it didn’t work. So she helped him off with his sweater and saw a queasy-making shape to his upper arm that had been perfectly straight a couple minutes before.

THAT got him an ambulance ride, a bone-setting under general anesthesia, two percutaneous pins for a month, a night in the hospital, and a cast.

My daughter did get an ER visit a few years later, at age 10 or so - fell on the wet stairs at an indoor waterpark. Her friend came and fetched me, saying “Moon Unit fell down and she’s crying”. A little cuddling and she was back in the pool having a blast.

2 hours later, after dinner out and then returning home, she started howling in pain again. With her not being the best patient, I was inclined to ignore it but Typo Knig persuaded me to call the doctor. He called back and I expected him to say “take two aspirin and call in the morning” but listening to the howling, he suggested an ER visit was indeed in order.

End result: compression fracture of one of her thoracic vertebrae (T10, I think). I felt like the Best Mom Evah, let me tell you.

Fortunately, there wasn’t a damn thing they did about it - painkillers for a couple days, and she was right as rain.

25

My sister shares the world record for this. She had her collarbone broken before she was even born. The doctor had to break it in order to complete the delivery. To hear my dad tell it, it was a near thing. By the time she was born she was blue all over and had to be resuscitated.

I’m far more boring: I’ve never had stitches nor broken any bones. I did suffer a separated shoulder at age 1, and then nothing at all until I tore a ligament in my knee last year. I would have gladly taken a broken bone instead. :smack:

26

Oh yeah, if we have any obstetricians (or prospective obstetricians) in the audience, I have some advice if you should ever find yourself in a similar situation to the one who delivered my sister. Do try to gracefully explain to the mother who just went through an extremely difficult delivery that you intentionally broke her newborn’s collarbone. Stammering out, “Well, I tried to break her arm…”? Not helpful. :stuck_out_tongue:

27

Kiddo has reached the ripe old age of 15 with no stitches or broken bones. I’m sure, having posted this, he will need both tomorrow.

28

I don’t have kids, but I have a split eyebrow from when I was a toddler; Mom opened a door, there was a THUD and an unconscious mini-Nava on the floor. My niece got stitches in the middle of her brow at age 3, from trying to break the floor (the floor won): she thought it was cool that she’d have a scar “just like grandma M” and is disappointed that Mom’s scar is so much more visible than hers.

Age 5, my brother was kneeling on a chair, grabbing its back and bouncing it. Dad said “stop that, you’ll hurt yourself”. He stopped. Started again. “Stop th…” THUD! Did you know that it’s possible to lose all 10 of your fingernails? First they all go black! (They grew back)

I also got a staple on my chin, but it’s under the chin and you can barely feel it any more. I was 9, slipped off the pool’s edge.

29

At 7 years old my older son wanted to be dropped off at the church skating rink. How many church day-cares have their own skating rinks? But this one did. We’d been there many times. This time he wanted to be a big boy.
At home I got the call that he’d fallen and dislocated his elbow. Orthopedic visits and rehab “Now try to touch your shoulder.” You can’t even trust God. (He was to later break the same elbow.)

Our younger son was hell on wheels. Shortly after walking, he climbed the ladder-back chair older son was sitting in, who got up…lower teeth through lower lip in resulting fall. He ate and drank stuff unfit for human consumption. Poison berries a goat wouldn’t eat? He got his stomach pumped. Kerosene? (Set up high.) Another trip to Children’s Hospital ER. Rubbing alcohol? At this point I was surprised we hadn’t been turned in. Our running joke was we didn’t say “damnation.” It was “Damn, Nathan!” Later, a broken arm, wrist, and hand.

Neither one broke their necks. For this I’m grateful.

30

When my son was a toddler (so under two?) he fell and cut his forehead open on the corner of a filing cabinet, and we had to take him in to get the 1/2 inch gash superglued shut.

Then on his fifth birthday he was running in church (after the service), fell, and cut his forehead open again. This one needed stitches.

A year later he was running in the house, slipped and hit his head on a corner and cut open his forehead AGAIN in the same spot as before. This time it was harder to stitch because of the previous scar tissue. He now has a nice scar there.

As for me, by the time I was three I had broken both of my arms in separate incidents.

31

My son went through his childhood without any visits to the ER. No broken bones, no stitches, heck I can’t even recall a bad illness. My daughter on the other hand has had a broken collar bones, stitches in her leg and foot and is currently at school with her face all scratched up from a skateboarding fall yesterday. I don’t think he was lucky and she unlucky. She is entirely more active than he ever was and with lots of physical activity, injuries can follow.

32

I knocked out a baby tooth when I was 4 or 5. Mom had threatened me with severe bodily harm if she caught me jumping on the bed one. more. time. so I was jumping on the couch instead, tripped over the arm, and hit my face on the canister vacuum she’d left out. I was 10 before I had actual stitches, though–we were in a car wreck and I bounced my face off the windshield, severing my lower lip.

My brother, otoh, didn’t make it from the delivery room to the nursery without a cast. Back in the days before routine ultrasounds, they didn’t have any way to know his chest was bigger than his head until he got stuck partway out. (It didn’t help matters that he was over 11 pounds.) They had to give Mom a 100+ stitch episiotomy and still did something to his shoulder/collarbone getting him out. The “defective right out of the box” jokes write themselves.

33

My poor little son needed stitches below his lip after a fall at the age of 15 months. What’s even worse is that we had only just adopted him at 11 months. Great job, mom - only had him for 4 months and already broke him!

Daughter broke her elbow at the age of 6 - no stitches, just a cast for 4 weeks.

34

If we stick with injuries and not illnesses…

Oldest son(18) nothing
Second son (also 18) busted up knuckled pretty bad but nothing broken/no stitches, lots of road rashes from long boarding
Third son(15) broke collar bone when he was 12 (throwing a football around with older brother) and lots of bumps and bruises from hockey
Oldest daughter (12) had to have a cut on the top of her cheek glued back together after her little brother threw a cup at her (she was 4 and he was 3)
Youngest son(11) had a concussion a couple of years ago (hockey) and had to have a piece of his lip snipped off a couple of years ago. He tore his lip on an upholstery staple on the back of the couch and there wasn’t enough to stitch back but to much to leave without risking deformity
Youngest daughter (9) had enough medical scares when she was a baby that she isn’t allowed to get hurt.

35

My son (now 10) was just a little over 1 year old and just starting to run when he fell and hit his head on our coffee table. He bled profusely, and I had to race him to the emergency room, where he got several stitches. He still has a small scar on his forehead.

Interestingly, he didn’t cry much when he was first wounded, and didn’t mind the stitching at all… but he screamed and cried like a maniac when the nurses put him in the “papoose” that was designed to hold him still while he got the stitches. For my son, confinement is far scarier and more intolerable than pain.

36

I don’t have kids, but family have expressed surprise I survived childhood; I managed to injure myself so often that I have a scar going halfway round my scalp, and no-one can remember where I got it.

My parents weren’t actually neglectful, I could just find a way to injure myself in an empty room. The first emergency hospitalisation I remember (and my first memory) was getting hit in the face with a hammer, accidently, by my brother. I was about 2 1/2. I think that was the 3rd or 4th time I’d needed stitches in my head, though. The others were me running into things, falling over and not putting my hands out, or generally being the one who went ‘Oooh, what does this do?!’ poke

The only bone I’ve broken so far is my nose, which doesn’t really count- however, no-one knows when I did it, to my parents’ utter humiliation when they found out years later.

37

The daughter has been a daredevil ever since she could toddle and climb, so when the nursery rang to say my (then three-year-old) child had fallen, hit her head on the corner of a chest and needed to go to the hospital, my reaction was “I’m surprised it’s taken her this long to end up in the ER”. No stitches - they were going to glue it but she wouldn’t sit still and the gash was next to her eye, so in the end they put butterfly bandages on it and it healed up nicely. She still has a scar but it conveniently follows the line of her eyebrow so isn’t too noticeable.

As for me, I ended up in the ER a few times as a child, including taking a header into the back of a car seat when my father braked suddenly (remember when kids would ride in the back of station wagons and no one thought this was a big deal? Those were the days…), but it took me until 10 and getting clocked with a T-bar while skiing to get stitches (13 of 'em). A few years later I accidentally put a hand through a window and needed a few more in my arm.

I’ve never broken a bone, although I did break a front tooth while skateboarding when 12. Never skateboarded again.

38

My son needed stitches in his head when he was about 2 years old. He had climbed up on the tractor when no one was looking (you know, that thing he had been told to never climb on without dad around), promptly fell off and caught his head on something on the way down.

Both girls made it to 5 or 6 before they needed to visit the ER. Girls, they’re so much easier :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

39

No kids of my own, but my older niece fell off of a slide at age two and got a huge gash in her forehead. The doctor glued the cut back together rather than using stitches, and my niece thought it was cool to have a purple splotch on her forehead.

As for me, I managed to make it to age 34 before I got stitches, and those were from getting my wisdom teeth out.