emERgency

Now that it's all over, I've calmed down and I know that everything is okay I can write this post. I'm a little hesitant because of the guilt and shame, but I want to document it so I can hopefully look back at it someday and remind myself of how stupid I was.

I am officially OUT of the running for the "Mother of the Year" award. Why is that? Morgan fell out of her car seat yesterday on to the concrete garage floor (insert guilt and shame here). I went to get my hair done yesterday and while we were there she fell asleep in my arms. So I put her in her car seat, inserted paci and covered her up to her neck with her blanket. When we left an hour later I put her in the car and we headed home. As I grabbed the seat out of the car and turned to start walking I heard a noise. I thought "what the heck was that"? It was Morgan, lying on the ground. As you can imagine I lost it. I picked her up and ran into the house. I immediately called Michael who came home. Then I called the pediatrician who told me to take her straight to the ER to make sure everything was okay. I stripped her down to try and find out where she hit. I found nothing. Not a red mark on her. Shouldn't there be a bump or something? By this time Michael was home so we loaded her up and off we went. Morgan slept the whole way there which worried me even more.

At the ER I had to tell the nurse what happen. All I could do was cry and think about what a horrible parent I was. All of the nurses at Wolfson assured me that I was not the first person that this happen to and I wouldn't be the last. It helped a little, but I just wanted her to be okay. We were taken back and while we waited for the doc Morgan was cooing and smiling like I've never seen her do before. On the outside she seemed totally fine. The doc checked her out and said the same thing, but because of her age and the fact that she fell on concrete she ordered a CT scan just to make sure there was nothing internally wrong. I was able to be in the room with her and all I could do was look at her, sound asleep in that big machine, and cry. Three hours after arriving we were told that she was perfectly fine. We were told to just watch her and make sure that she was eating and waking up when she normally does. She made it through the night with flying colors.

Morgan fell out of the car seat because I forgot to buckle her in when we left the hair salon. She was sound asleep and covered up that I didn't even think to check the straps. 99% of the time when she is in the seat she is strapped in so it never crossed my mind. And to add to that, the bar on the car seat was not in the center position when I took her out of the car. It was one click toward the back which means when I turned and dropped my left hand to carry her with one hand the entire seat tilted forward and she slid right out.

I am so THANKFUL that she is okay. It really could have been a lot worse. I keep playing the whole scenario over and over in my head and I still don't know exactly what happen. How far did she fall? What was that noise that I heard? Was it her hitting the ground or was it one of the toys in the garage falling because I hit it with the seat? What part of her body did she hit? I honestly think that I will never know. It all happen so fast and I just wanted to hold her in my arms.

I can promise you that I will always check and double check to make sure that they are both strapped in to their seats. I never want to feel again what I felt yesterday when I saw her lying on the ground. It broke my heart.

Seeing her smile makes it better though.