Bump on the head and what to watch out for

The worst thing when your children are at school or nursery, has to be seeing the school office number coming up on your phone.  It’s happened a lot in the past.  At nursery for permission to give calpol and various bumps and scrapes warnings before I turned up and was horrified (well, that one was only once).  And school it seems that a bump on the head is N’s favourite method of injury.

In reception year, the school got a bit wise to him. They were finding any tiny little bump that wasn’t really anything worth talking about was being exaggerated in order that he could get a Mr Bump ice pack and an ‘I bumped my head’ wristband.

Thankfully this year so far, N’s just appeared with various knee scrapes as you’d expect from children playing rough and tumble in the playground.

But last week I’d dropped him off at school and just got into work, pulled out my phone and found 5 missed calls.  1 from the OH and the rest voicemails notifications and a message from the head mistress. I couldn’t get through to the school so checked with the OH who was vague. He just said he’d had a call but didn’t know anything other than N had bumped his head and I needed to ring the school.

This is where I want to wring his neck. Because why didn’t he ask the questions, or go into school to see, given he works for himself and could have probably just popped to the school to find out and check N.  But I got through to school, and it turned out it was a mammoth bump on the head from falling off a bar he was sitting on.

Now I did wonder this was nearly a repeat of the last cross country competition when N was similarly sitting on a fence and fell off.  He doesn’t learn from his mistakes obviously.

Handily the school is opposite the doctors surgery so asked a doctor and nurse to come and check him out.  I was asked to pick him up because it was better for us to keep an eye on him, but he wasn’t good by the time I got to school.

N was sitting in the office under a blanket and looked so pale.  He was also shivering although he did say it was because he had an ice pack.  But I think it was just shock from it all.  His teacher with him and the head said that the bump had gone down but it was huge, right on the back of his head.

Luckily I can work from home if needed, so I bundled him off home and under a blanket on the sofa, with the warning ‘don’t go to sleep’.

After an hour of tv though he was bored and hungry. Of course, I had no food in the house, having not planned to have to provide meals that week, so had to scavenge around for him.  Thankfully N is pretty good at finding things to do so he played with some toys quietly, before it was time for lunch.

His appetite was fine and he’d got his colour back.  By the afternoon he wanted to go out on the farm and play out in the garden.  So I was able to watch him play outside for the afternoon while I worked.  One of those unfortunate days and accidents that could have been a lot worse, but his hard head obviously recovered quickly.  School also rang to check how he was doing which was nice.  I pity them for the accident forms they’ll have to fill in.

The bump has taken its time to go and nearly a week later it’s still slightly noticeable if you put your hand over it.  But the next day he was back at school for the last day of term, and you’d never have known he’d hurt himself.

Hopefully that’s it for N and head bumps.   Although someone did say recently that children going through growth spurts get a bit clumsy so that could be a reason why this one happened.

If you’re not sure what to do in the case of a head bump, here’s the NHS recommendations:

1. Sit the child down, comfort them and make sure they rest.  An ice pack (in tea towel) will help with the bump.  We also used aloe vera gelly (we call it magic jelly) on the bump later on to help ease the tenderness quicker.
2. Check for lucidity, slurred words, dizziness, vomiting, fits or any unconsciousness – take to hospital with any of these symptoms
3. If there was a serious head knock, the child didn’t cry and no bump appeared, it’s worth getting it checked out because it could be an internal injury.
4. With an immediate raised bump coming up, that’s usually better news.  If none of the first symptoms are in place, keep an eye on the child for excessive sleepiness, or the above symptoms.

If in the UK and you’re worried, then ring your doctor (they’ll usually advise on the phone) or ring 111 for advice.

Are your children always getting injuries? How do their schools deal with them?

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