Our first (kind of) broken bone

Last Friday during nap time James climbed out of his crib for the first time...and really hurt his shoulder! I heard screaming in his room and when I opened the door he was lying on the floor, sobbing. When I went to pick him up, he told me that his head hurt. After a few minutes he told me that his shoulder hurt too. He wouldn't lift it up or let anyone touch it but he was still using it a little bit. I was worried, but not too worried. Anthony came home and looked at it and said that we should really get some xrays of it, but that it didn't look like an emergency. Since it was Friday afternoon, we decided to wait until Monday and if it wasn't better we would get some xrays.

Monday afternoon it seemed to be a little better, but he still wouldn't put pressure on it and would complain about it hurting if we picked him up a certain way. So off we went to get xrays! James charmed all the people in the office :) He walked right up to everybody and introduced himself. He would pat his chest and say "I'm James!". After they would say hello he would declare, "I fell out of my crib! I hurt my shoulder!" and would pat his left shoulder. He was talkative and happy up until he actually had to take the xray. Then the tears came! He didn't like having to hold still in a certain position and I think everyone wearing the lead aprons kind of scared him. He kept crying and saying, "I wanna go!" :( Afterwards he was all smiles and he loved showing off his stickers they gave him.

A few hours after they took the xray, they called with their initial findings (not the official word, just what they saw at first glance) to tell us that he had a hairline clavicle fracture! I couldn't believe it! What luck that he would fracture a bone the very first time he decided to climb out of his crib. We weren't sure what the treatment would be since there isn't much you can do for that kind of a fracture. A sling or a brace at the most. We decided to wait until we got the official report from the radiologist. A day or so later we got the official report which decided that it was negative for a fracture (yay!) but that they couldn't rule out a slight dislocation...I had no idea there was such a thing as a slight dislocation. I always thought that was an all or nothing kind of deal. We really didn't think he dislocated anything since he was using his arm so much, but since there was doubt about it we decided to go see an orthopedic doctor to have him look at it.

This is the initial xray. The really slight shadow is where they thought it might be fractured.

This morning he had his appointment with the orthopedist. He was a little scared of the doctor at first (he was really tall and had a really loud, booming voice) but he quickly warmed up to him. He had him reach up to grab his finger and then he would pull back to see how he would react. He felt the bone and had him give him high fives with his left hand. It took some coaxing to get him to use his left arm, but I think that is more out of habit now from when it did hurt because it doesn't seem to be hurting him now. They took some more xrays in the office (which was so cool that they did it right there and had the results in about 10 minutes. So nice!) and the doctor said they look completely normal, no fracture or anything. He said that it may not have been his clavicle at all, but he could have pulled a muscle or strained something, or even bruised a rib. Since I didn't actually see how he feel out of the crib, anything could be possible. I still think it had something to do with his clavicle since he had a light bruise on his shoulder right where the questionable spot on the xray was. In the end, all that matters is that he is getting better every day and we haven't had to deal with forcing him to wear a brace or a sling!