Mom Of The Year!

these photos were taken 2 days after the horrible event

A few weeks ago Hayden fell down the stairs...there's only 3, but they are hard and stairs none the less...leading out to our garage. Here's the story: We took Josh to school and when we got home I carried Hayden in the house and set him down while I took off my shoes and jacket. As soon as I set him down he walked off into the kitchen. I barely got my shoes off when I heard a big crash and Hayden screaming. I walked into the kitchen to see him at the bottom of the stairs with the baby gate under him. Earlier that morning I had put the baby gate in that doorway, since there is no door, to prevent Hayden from going down there and playing in or dumping our dog's water...he loves doing this! The gate must not have been attached correctly. I didn't see it but I'm assuming that Hayden leaned on the gate to look over it and went flying down the stairs when it moved. It was so sad! He had a bloody nose, but I couldn't see any other bumps or bruises. He was bawling hysterically and I rocked him and tried to comfort him but it took him about 10 min to settle down. He was already tired that morning so he was starting to fall asleep and I know they say you shouldn't let them go to sleep after a fall but I did. While he was trying to get to sleep in my arms he kept whimpering. I felt horrible! I kept rubbing his forehead even though I couldn't see any bumps or bruising. He fell asleep in my arms and after a few minutes I stood up to lay him in his crib. As soon as I stood up he started bawling again. So I sat down and rocked him until he fell asleep again. I waited longer after he fell asleep to stand up. As soon as I layed him in his crib he woke right up and bawled again. This happened twice before I finally gave up and rocked him to sleep for the 4th time and then layed on the sofa and held him. When he woke up he had a big bump between his eyes and his nose was all red and swollen. Wow! I felt so bad for him! He acted fine so I gave him some lunch, which he ate, and decided that getting out of the house and a pick me up from Josh sounded great. So I drove to the dental school and called Josh and told him I was there...it was his lunch break. He was surprised and came out to the car to see us. When he saw Hayden he said WHAT HAPPENED? I explained and then we talked and he asked me if I gave him anything for the pain or swelling. Um...NO, didn't think about that! Way to go MOM! Then we discussed taking him to the pediatrician just to make sure his nose wasn't broken and there was no further damage. We ran into our friends Garth and Melissa who thought Hayden looked horrible when they saw him and said they would take him in. Melissa said, "You never know if there is internal bleeding or anything." I told her not to tell me such things. I took him straight from there to the pediatrician's office and had him checked out. I was a little worried about what people might think, honestly he looked pretty bad and if you didn't know us you could possibly think some pretty awful stuff. Everyone at the office was so understanding. They all had their own stories about how their kids had similar accidents. By that evening he looked better, and by the next morning most of the swelling had gone down and he was just bruised.

The night of the fall we were playing with him and he turned to run away and lost his balance and fell right on his face. SO sad!

The next day he was holding the lotion bottle after his bath and accidently dropped it right on his nose!

About a week later he was taking a while to fall asleep during his nap. Josh and I were upstairs and we heard a loud THUMP downstairs and we both immediately went running! I opened Hayden's door to see him standing there, crying, waiting for me to open the door. He had jumped/climbed/fallen out of his crib. He wasn't hurt, thankfully! Guess it was a little past time to move up the side rail!