Just Call Me "Grace"

Edited to add - Don't forget to listen at 10pm tonight!



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The week before Little H was born, I fell down in the hospital parking lot. I was 8 months pregnant, a little awkward, and I refused to stop wearing heels. Hey, I'm 5'2", people, I need all the help I can get!

Anywho, I'd been walking out to my car after one of my twice weekly biophysical profiles at the hospital (ah, the joys of high risk pregnancy), and I went down like a rock. Onto my knee. I was wearing a skirt. Ouch.

I wish I could blame it on that stretchy ligament thing that happens to pregnant women, but I'm generally a klutz even when I'm not knocked up. I once fell down while standing still in a hallway talking to a co-worker.

Seriously.

I may be one smart cookie, but apparently I can't stand and talk at the same time.

So, when I went in for my conveniently scheduled c-section a week after my parking lot fall, the nurse took a look at my gruesome knee, asked me how it happened, and then promptly clipped a hot pink band around my wrist.


She told me that it's used as a warning to the staff that I'm a habitual faller.

Me: "You mean it tells everyone that I'm a klutz who can't be trusted to walk to the bathroom by herself or say, handle an innocent newborn?"
Nurse: "Yeah. Pretty much."

Well, I was allowed to handle Holden, but they did slap a nice matching sign onto my hospital room door.


When my perinatologist saw it, she told me that they usually only put it on the doors of little old women who've just broken a hip.

Great.

Just get me one of those LifeCall buttons and call it a day. Although, for the record, I've never seriously uttered the words, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

"We're sending help immediately, Mrs. Fletcher!"

Since then, I've managed many spectacularly embarrassing falls, but none of them were particularly memorable. It happens so often, you see, that the scars on my knees all sort of blend together.

Fast forward to last weekend.

T and I took the H's to the Botanical Gardens to see my picture and to let the little heathens run amok for awhile. The children's garden tuckered them out nicely, so we hopped on the tram for the ride back to the car. When we got off the tram, I attempted to sit down on a low retaining wall while hubs went to get the car.

I was holding Holden.

You can see where this is going already, can't you? Yup. It will be a miracle if the child makes it to adulthood.

I fell down right by the wall.

T said it was a rather graceful fall and complimented the way I cupped Holden's head and rolled onto my back like a turtle. Whereupon I laid there like a half-dead cockroach, kicking my legs and yelling at T to take the baby.

Unfortunately, despite my cradling of Little H, I managed to slam his right arm into and down the wall on my way down. There was a lot of screaming. Most of it done by me. "He hit the wall! OMG! He hit the WALL!"

Are we seeing a pattern here?

Holden is fine. His arm is a bit scraped up, but I think I have a few more gray hairs.

And I'm no longer allowed to carry the baby unless he's encased in bubble wrap.

I just hope poor Holden hasn't inherited my grace and poise. If so, the poor kid is doomed.


Oh yeah, that lovely "I'm a klutz" sign up above? My husband asked if he could take it when we left the hospital. It hangs on our refrigerator door.

I love you too, dear.