My Scariest Mommy-Moment

not my daughter, but it's not a bad idea...

A very unhappy thing happened in our house last night: Amara crawled off the bed.

We'd been out visiting our Fathers and Grandfathers for a bit of the day, and were relieved to get home and put our very tired daughter to bed. She took all of 30-seconds to pass out, so we put a movie on the living room that's adjacent to our bedroom where she was sleeping. After a while, we heard her crying and so I went in to put a clean diaper on and nurse her. She again fell asleep shortly after this, so I went back out to the living room and was talking to Ron.

Moments later, we heard a thud that came from the bedroom. We, of course, bolted for the door but were met by cries before making it through the doorway. Unfortunately, one has to cross the room in order to turn on the light, so Ron headed for the lamp while I looked on my side of the bed to find the baby. Except that there was no baby! The pillows I carefully laid out to keep Amara from rolling off were still in their place on the bed, but left nothing but a void between them, and the floor was empty on both sides. Ron yelled over the cries "WHERE IS SHE?!" to which I couldn't answer.

We found her at the foot of our bed on the floor, facing the bed. Crying. Eyes closed. Not moving except for her screams. Horrified, I got to her first and was able to shoo Ron away from instinctively grabbing her up. Panicked, I held her head in alignment with her spine while I checked her extremities for movement and her spinal column for no deviations. Yeah, Paramedic-Mama at her best. She seemed okay, so we scooped her up and tried to comfort her while feeling her head for bumps.

Finding no injuries, we were able to calm our sweet baby down to where she was able to again flash her gigantic gummy smile at us. We wiped away the tears that were running down her neck, and she and I spent the next 15 minutes playing piano together. After checking her pupils, visual tracking, and behavior for the next half an hour, we finally decided that her spitting up was not vomit and we could go to bed instead of to the hospital. She was restless, though, and didn't fall asleep for another hour and a half.

I don't even care that I'm tired today after getting to sleep four hours later than normal and waking up all night long to verify my child's health. I'm kicking myself for not turning on the baby monitor like we always do when she's napping without us. I don't know why I didn't think that she could crawl off the bed trying to find us before we'd hear her and be in there! Yikes. Lesson learned, and thankfully with no bumps or bruises (or *cringe* worse) to remind us.

This has been my scariest mama-moment thus far, and I hope it's the worst one I ever have. The horror of hearing the "thud," and then the panic of not being able to find our baby! Not good, I tell you. I just keep thanking God that she's okay, because I have seen what can happen to babies from accidents and I never want to experience that. For the future? Duct Tape to hold my child in place.

What has been your scariest mama-moment, and how did you manage?