Hellobee Boards

@yellowbird: Oh s***, I forgot about the time H choked on an apple and I had to do the infant heimlich on her. It was so scary.

I walked around the corner to our basement staircase just as DS was tipping headfirst down from the top step. I lunged after him and we both fell down the entire flight and landed on the basement floor. This was a few months ago when I was 16 weeks pregnant. Thankfully I broke his fall and we were banged up but no major injuries. DH saw it happen and we were both pretty traumatized! DS seemed unfazed after the initial shock and was more upset that it derailed our trip to the playground.

I feel like I have too many to count with my daredevil child... Thankfully my 2nd isn't as adventurous.

But the scariest moment for me was when we were in our neighbors pool. My 3.5 year old jumped in the water with a noodle like she had been all day, but this time she didn't come back up from the water. She was just under the water, eyes wide and scared, and not even struggling to get back to the top. I was literally 5 feet from her (in chest-deep water), but because holding my 18 month old, it took me what felt like forever to get to her and yank her out of the water. The look on her face still haunts me, and I still can't think about what would have happened if I hadn't looked over when I did.

Waiting on MRI results to see if he he had a brain tumor. The same week a bunch of people I knew were attending the funeral of a little boy who had just died from a brain tumor with the same symptoms as my son. I literally can't talk about it out loud with people it makes me so sick, even though his results were clear.

@Adira: Same. LO1 went into anaphylactic shock on two occasions due to ingesting peanuts. It was scary seeing him barely breathing, and we had to use an epi-pen both times and bring him to the hospital. Luckily we had epi-pens on hand since we had him tested for allergies when he was 1.

LO2 had a really bad reaction to wheat. He didn't go into anaphylactic shock, but his whole body swell up. We were so concerned since it was a first for us. Another trip to the ER. So thankful for modern medicine and easy access to doctors.

my son had a couple of seizures when he was three months old - like 4 over the course of a week. we called 911 and they took him to the hospital and did all of the tests. they never found what was wrong (which they said is a good thing). other than that one week, he's never had it happen again!

My sister dropped my second baby when she was 6 weeks old. Right on her head. Watching her fall and not being able to reach her in time was the worst, scariest thing that I've ever experienced. Worse than watching my father die. Unfortunately it has really influenced my parenting with her, and I'm much more cautious and anxious with her than I was with my older daughter. I still have real ptsd about it.

@jlm22: Xander's was sort of gradual, but definitely happened quick. First he developed hives on his face and neck and started scratching at them. Then he started sneezing and then coughing and then trouble breathing. It probably progressed over the course of an hour, but it felt really quick and scary at the time.

These are so scary, but everyone seems to have reacted the best they could at the time. It's a good lesson reading these stories and knowing things happen and you learn from it.

When #2 was like a week old, I was feeding her on my bed. LO #1 (18 months) was in the bath ( in our ensuite, just a few steps away from where I was feeding #2) If I leaned forward, I could see her, but when I was sitting back against the pillow, I couldn't see her. She was playing and I heard a noise, just splashing, but something told me it wasn't right, I leaned forward and couldn't see her. I jumped out of the bed, threw my coffee all over the floor and lunged into the bathroom. She had fallen over backwards and her face was completely under the water. Because she was panicking, she couldn't lift her head out of the water. I had to rip the baby off my boob and put her down while pulling Lo1 out of the tub. The look on her face under the water was sheer terror. I'll never ever ever forget that look. She was fine, she was only under for less than 5 seconds probably at most. She cried for a minute and then wanted right back in. A mistake on me, not being able to see her the whole time in the bath, but a lesson learned.

My LO is a breath holder. When he gets very upset, he holds his breath. Usually we can get him to breathe but when he was 13 months old, he hit his head hard and held his breath to the point where he went blue and stopped breathing. I thought he was going to die. I had never seen a kid do this. He eventually started breathing again about 15 seconds later but that was 15 seconds too long for my poor heart. We had already called 911, I started chest compressions, and a policeman and EMTs were at my house in minutes. I called the pediatrician the next day and they told me that this is something that some kids do. Our only way to prevent it is not to let him get so upset that he holds his breath and passes out again. He has passed out once since but now we know what to do when he turns blue (blow in his ear, make loud random sounds to surprise him into taking a breath).

These are so scary. My physically scariest moment was probably when DH let LO run towards our live rat traps after I specifically reminded him not too. She was too far away for either of us to reach so all I could do was shout and listen for the snap. Thankfully she was so freaked by my shout she stopped and cried.

I think I was actually more scared when I went to pick LO up from her in home daycare one day and nobody answered the door. I kept knocking. A few minutes later DCP pulled up in her car with LO (in a carseat). When she opened her door her teenage son was coming up from the basement with a toddler. DCP said everything was fine and she that she had permission to leave that toddler with her son but my imagination ran wild with the whole scenario. I don't typically think like that. We switched daycares right after that.

@mrsjazz: this is such a nightmare - what happened? If you don't mind me asking - and of course feel free to ignore if you'd rather not respond and relive it!

Mine is small potatoes compared to some of these (probably bc he's only 16 months) but i got a call that he fell face first off the changing table when i was at work. he was fine, but had a very faint black eye for a couple of days. still though, i imagined brain injury and all of that when i got that call.

When DS was 8 months old he was crawling around the floor and I looked up and watched him put something in his mouth. I flew off the couch and as I got there he swallowed whatever it was. I heard a little gasp, but he seemed to be ok. I started panicking because chocking is one of my biggest fears with the kids, so I called 911. They took him to the hospital to do X-rays. We still don't know what it was, since the X-rays showed nothing, and we didn't find anything in his poop.

Another time, we were in Toronto, at the hotel and DS was walking around and tripped over nothing and went head first into the end table. He cut his forehead open. So much blood!

The birth of my third baby.

Other than that. We've been pretty lucky so far.

@sarac: Dh fell off of an officec chair while holding my son around that age and I swear I saw it in slow motion and it was scary. But thankfully dh was able to soften the blow.

Scariest moment? My five month old fractured her femur last week, so scariest moment is tied between when I saw her fall, hearing that her leg was broken, and waiting for them to wheel her away to surgery.

There were two times I can recall... One was when J was only about a year old. He had gone in the bathroom, closed the door, and opened the drawers. The bathroom in that apartment was super tiny, and the drawers of the vanity were right next to the door. So if the drawers were opened, the door couldn't be opened more than maybe 1/2 inch? Not even enough for me to get a couple fingers in there. I freaked out that he was locked in the bathroom and was too young to understand following the directions I was trying to give him. Obviously he could have turned on the tub to scalding water, or drown or something and I was helpless. I called DH at work, he was in the middle of teaching a class and I had the admin assistant get him from class, I was sobbing on the phone and didn't know what to do. He was going to come home, but then just at that moment (it was overall less than ten minutes he was in there alone), he figured out how to close the drawer to open the door. Oi. That was rough.

The second thing was when I was sleeping and I heard our front door slam shut. I leapt out of bed even forgetting to grab my glasses and realized J had just walked straight out of the apartment and was already at the end of the hallway before I got to him. He told me he was going down to the garage to "check on the dumpsters". It was the scariest thing. We then put a door alarm on our front door so I'd hear if he ever tried to leave again.

@Ajsmommy: oh my gosh that's so scary. Thank god you're both okay. I don't think the anxiety ever goes away. When I was 18, I was driving to the store with my three year old sister and I lost control when I hit ice on the road and the car went into the ditch and landed on its side. It was so scary. I couldn't open the door from the inside either. We were both fine, but ever since I have anxiety driving in wintery conditions (like if it's snowing or slippery).

@alphagam84: This was our experience, too. So scary, one second, I'm pushing, and the next my (blue, meconium-covered) son was on the other side of the room with about 10 people suddenly in the room, being suctioned, and I don't know what else. I found out later he had an APGAR score of 2. Thankfully, at 5 mins it was 9, and at 7 mins he was being put on my chest. But seriously the longest 7 mins of my life!!!

The second scariest moment was on NYE. I was getting ready to go out with DH and my parents were planning to watch DS (who is 9 mo), as we were visiting for the holidays. I heard screaming and shouts from DH to come quick. My son had pulled my mom's heavy DSLR down onto his head using the strap from the counter. He calmed down after several mins, but we still took him to the ER, and stayed in that night. We were concerned that because his head is still soft it might have damaged his brain, but apparently soft skulls are very good at preventing concussions! Good to know.

I do blame myself for drifting off to sleep once this fall after bringing him to bed for early morning nursing. He was on top of me and I only fully woke up after he'd crawled to the outer side (king bed) and he dived off the bed. He landed on his face, but thankfully I'd thrown the extra bed pillows there. Still, my heart stopped for a couple of seconds.

One thing that I've found over the last several months is that I'm the super calm one in an emergency. I can be objective and assess the situation, although nothing super bad has happened yet. DH freaks right out over the smallest bump. Ugh, pardon the novel.

D was running around our living room, and ran and kind of tripped and hit the wall. There is a big 18" HEAVY clock on that wall that fell off and missed his head by like a millimeter. If it had hit him, it would have caused major brain damage, if not killed him. I freaked, and we immediately secured it to the wall with command strips. That thing is stuck up there so well now that we didn't even bother getting it down to change it for DST, ha!