Broken Collarbone

Saturday, March 28th--A few days ago, Miss Audra was playing with the boys in their room.  The boys have two mattresses that they sleep on, but there is no frame for them, so they just lay on the ground.  Logan had put the mattresses up against the wall in order to have more space on the floor to play.  As they were playing around, Logan put Audra up on his shoulders and tried to climb up the mattresses while Chris and Nathan were pretending to get them.  While they were doing this, Audra fell off and landed on her head.
She wasn't crying much, but was upset and went in to Dad's room and curled up next to him on the bed (he was doing homework) and went to sleep.   She had a nap and then went right back to playing.
Over the next day or so, she was using her left arm, but she wasn't extending it all the way.  She was babying it, and couldn't lift it higher than her shoulder. 
We watched her closely, and she was improving on her mobility and there was less pain.  She began to fully use her arm again, but still could not lift it completely over her head.  After two days, we knew that something was not right with her arm.  It didn't seem to be swollen and there was no bruising.  We wondered if she had a bone out of joint, but didn't quite know what was going on.  We decided to just take her into the hospital to get a x-ray so that we could see exactly what was wrong and then know how to proceed from there.
Today, Raymond and I took her in.  We were shocked to see on the x-ray that Audra's collarbone was broken!  Considering how she had been acting and improving every day, we honestly did not think that anything was broken.  She didn't even cry very much when it happened!  What a tough little woman!  The bone had set itself and we could see growth in the break to show that it had already begun to heal.

Since you can't really put a cast on a collarbone, the doctor just gave us this green thing for Audra to wear.  It is supposed to put pressure on her collarbone and also push her shoulder back so that it helps to keep everything in place while she heals.  It seems kind of "3rd world country" to me....but I know that I'm only saying that because this is MY baby and I want her in a full body cast followed by several layers of bubble wrap so that nothing like this will ever happen again.  The Japanese healthcare system did a fine job, and the doctors in America would do something similar.  This wrap makes sense, it's just not good enough for MY baby. 

We call it her "princess wrap", and constantly tell her how pretty she looks with it on.  She has to wear it all the time, including while sleeping.  As the days go by, we will need to make sure it stays tight.
We are counting our lucky stars, though!  This wrap is a lot easier to deal with than a cast would be when it comes to bathing and dressing a three year old!

The broken collarbone hasn't slowed her down much!  She is still dancing all over the place, singing her "Flowers everywhere!!" songs.  She will start to cry if we try to pick her up by grabbing her under her arms, but as long as we don't do that, she is doing great!!

The doctor said that it will probably take four weeks to heal....let's hope that Audra and the boys are careful and don't set it back with all their rough housing.