Standing amidst the ruins
He stood up today. By himself. Aided by a chair, fine, but he stood up. I sat there, aghast, as he teetered on his teeny baby feet and wondered, "Would I get arrested if I hobbled him once in a while?" For his own safety, of course.
When Perp was about 13 months old (I was either newly or almost pregnant with the Dude at this time so probably a hormonal mess already, though it's always seemed to me like being a hormonal mess is an okay thing because it allows you to do things like eat an entire jar of Nutella and not even put it on bread, or, say, eat a pound of bacon. Not that I've ever done either, I'm just using them as examples. ahem), she fell down the stairs. Thirteen stairs. Uncarpeted, hard wooden stairs that lead to an uncarpeted, hard wooden floor.
I'd been playing with her in her room and she took off down the hall. Every other time she bolted, she went straight to my room. This time, she hooked around the corner and let gravity do the rest.
She landed flat on her back and I was sure that she'd injured herself, either breaking her neck or something equally hideous.
She sat right up and I figured that her back/neck must be okay, but I also figured that head trauma was a real possibility. You know, because of how she sailed down about thirteen feet of hard wood and landed flat on her back while I wasn't paying attention. Stuff like that.
Off we go to the ER, and I guess because of all the crying and freaking out, she started falling asleep, which made ME freak out and I was smacking her leg, frantically trying to keep her awake (ah, how ironic that is now).
The nurses at the ER were, frankly, total whoretard bitches. I know they have to assume that injuries to children are suspicious until proven otherwise (legal system notwithstanding, apparently), but it should have been entirely clear that this was just a household accident and I hadn't, in fact, given in to my darkest urges and shoved my toddler down the stairs. I'm waiting until she's 16 for that.
So now we have a gate between the upstairs hallway and the stairs landing. And we're using it a lot more now that the Dude is becoming semi-mobile. And I hope that his injury rate is lower than hers. But given what happened last night, I may be wasting my time: 
Who knew you could trip while crawling?
2 comments:
Aww, his first fat lip. Poor Dude!
(In strictest confidentiality, Lily fell down the stairs right around 12m. She'd only been walking for a month. We were in her room and she was RIGHT next to me. I turned around and saw her fall forward. I dove to catch her and WATCHED her fall (and I think I slid) down the stairs, to have the bottom gate break her fall. She was hysterical, but uninjured. I was hysterical and totally traumatized. I cried and cried and cried. I kept seeing her fall over and over in my head. I cried myself to sleep that night as she slept peacefully in her crib (such a rare event). I had huge rug burns on my legs and hands from diving across the hallway and down the stairs. We IMMEDIATELY gated the top of the stairs.)
If it makes you feel better, Dane's fallen off the bed too many times to count. If we had regularly used stairs I'm sure they'd be fallen down too.
Poor little ones! I hope they heal quickly!
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