Nursemaid Elbow

When Samantha was about 5 months old, she had the hiccups and my mom was lightly pulling her arms above her head when she heard a pop.  Samantha was immediately in pain and crying and after we took her to to the ER and to see her pediatrician we found out that she had nursemaid elbow.

Nursemaid's elbow or Pulled elbow is a dislocation of the elbow joint caused by a sudden pull on the extended pronated arm, such as by an adult tugging on an uncooperative child, or swinging the child by the arms during play. The technical term for the injury is radial head subluxation.

It is awful to watch your baby in terrible pain and while it is fairly easy to get popped back in by a doctor, we were warned that some children are more prone to this happening and we could expect it to happen again.

Since then, it has happened three more times.  Once, as she was just learning to stand, she was holding on to Dave's leg and as she slipped, he pulled her arm up to keep her standing and popped it out.  As we were walking to the pool this summer, my dad and I were walking and tried to swing her one time and  it popped out.  And while we were in Oklahoma last week, my dad pulled her up from laying down and it popped out again.

Samantha is very serious, thoughtful, young girl.  For about a week after it happened this summer, when I went to get Samantha up in the morning, she would look at me very solemnly and the first thing she would say was "I'm sorry you hurt my elbow Mommy, I know that it was an accident."  Way to lay on the guilt child!

Last week when we arrived at the ER in Oklahoma at 9 pm, we were told it would be a 2-4 hour wait.  Luckily my cousin's boyfriend has a sister who is a doctor and was nice enough to come meet us and pop her elbow back in.  It is amazing to me that moments after it is fixed, it is 100% better.  I guess we need a lesson in how to do it ourselves - after doing some more reading online it looks like after the age of 6 we should be in the clear.