When did your world go quiet?

[PalominoOrGreyOrChestnutOrBay]

inspired by a tiktok trend recently, just thought it might be an interesting thread. I’m a regular poster not a journalist or anything like that (MNHQ can verify!).

When did your world go quiet? Basically, what was a time you got a fright and time seemed to stop or go quiet?

mine was I was on my horse and he decided to rear up, over concrete ground, and I felt him wobble back. As soon as I felt that first tilt backwards everything sort of went quiet and it was like an out of body experience (not a good one!). I couldn’t hear anyone around. I just remember the last thing I thought was along the lines of this is it im about to die and it was like everything was in slow motion. Luckily it was all ok but that split second was easily the scariest moment of my life and my world completely stopped.

So, when did your world go quiet?

When my child had sepsis. First, when I thought he wouldn't survive until the ambulance arrived.

Secondly, in the ambulance when the 2 ambulance crews suddenly went silent, worked even more quickly, the sirens went on and they radioed the hospital to get a team standing at the door to go straight into resus.

Username checks out. And lol at him wanting to go home in the ambulance. 😂 My god watching your cold fall down the stairs must have been horrifying.

Sorry for your loss, birthing a lost child is awful.

With my MMC had a wierd little panic moment as he came out and the nurse ran out the room with him in a pan and my brain instantly went to 'they're kidnapping him' which sounds insane but I had heard old stories of nurses not letting mams see the lost babies and 'disposing of them' and just paniked. They actually where just checking everything came out intact and removing the caul to check and came back in with him after about a minute but I was in full panic flap for that minute yelling 'where is he, whered they take him'.

However I will add that non of my living children cried when they where born either though, I think they where all shocked silent from what they had just been squeezed through lol.

When I was 10 a man tried to snatch me from a train station as I stood alone while my dad was in the toilet.

Time definitely slowed down for me as he confidently strode towards me, staring directly at me, without glancing away and with an almost deviant look. I remember it so vividly. As he reached towards my arm I dodged him and ran to the toilet. I ran inside the mens shouting my dad. He was just drying his hands so we ran out immediately but the man had disappeared.

Last summer on the motorway in the dark, absolutely torrential rain and a lightning storm. We couldn’t even see the car in front of us with its lights on.

I was near tears and my ex was just calmly driving with his face about five inches from the windscreen. It was terrifying - everyone slowed down to about 20mph but I kept thinking about how the cars behind us might not know we had slowed down and go into the back of us all.

The car in front then stopped completely and my ex pulled into the lane next to him and slowly overtook him because he said we absolutely must not stop. The car in front of him hadn't stopped, he had just panicked. Everything completely slowed down and I just remember thinking every thirty seconds that the situation was still happening and I still didn’t know how it was going to end.

I wouldn’t ever trust another man’s driving abilities like I trusted his. He was really something else.

When I wiped at 15 weeks pregnant and found blood pouring out of me. DH was at work and I couldn't get hold of him and all I wanted to do was scream. I thought it was the universe finally getting me back..

My little boy somehow survived 💙

When a lorry pulled in front of me without any right of way or warning and I just hurtled towards the side of it. My son was also with me sitting in the front seat. Everything went into slow motion and I thought we're going to die and all I will see is blackness.

Lost my 5yr old dd at the end of a school fair in London. Not panicky at first but looking, then gradually the whole playground emptied, people packing up final bits on stalls etc and me running round. I couldn’t understand why the whole world didn’t just stop to help find her, people just said, no, not seen her and carried on packing up. I burst into office where staff were counting takings and asked them, they just said no and gave me disapproving looks for disturbing them.
by the time the playground was totally empty I was hysterical.
She had climbed into the back of the visiting ambulance and closed the door, was happily playing in there in the car park.
the driver found her and walked her round to find me.

It was horrible.

When I saw my three year old son get hit by a car while we were on a pedestrian crossing. I thought he had been killed. Time seemed to freeze and everything went silent and then I was on the floor with him, just screaming and screaming like someone else had taken over my body. I can still put myself in that exact moment (and often do ).

That was February 1999. He is now fully grown, and miraculously was not badly injured, even though he could have easily been killed. Sometimes luck is on your side. I feel fundamentally changed by the experience, and still think of it often. Easily the worst moment of my entire life.

When I was being rushed to theatre with a ruptured ectopic & severe internal bleeding, I was drifting in & out of consciousness. Two junior doctors were trying to insert a wire (?) into either arm to record my blood pressure when one shouted they’d got it in. The other remarked how amazing it was you could be alive with such low blood pressure & I laughed. They were not expecting a response! I felt very calm & peaceful even though I knew it was touch & go whether I’d wake up.

My mother had a seizure a month before our wedding - never any problems before. When I saw it I just knew it was not going to be good. She kind of blew it off but that’s when my world stopped. The week before the wedding she was diagnosed with brain cancer and died five months later. She never got to meet our only child who looks so much like her.

Chilling reading this. I am so glad everything turned out fine.

It's actually really good to read things like this as it teaches a very important lesson (also like the pp whose dd fell into the pool as she was looking for sunscreen) so no judgement from me.

Really is terrifying how life can change in the blink of an eye. I am so very glad you saved your dd x

My crash was similar @Avelanda except I was hit head on by a car on the wrong side of the road. Both cars spun but on one side of the road was an open field and on the other was a wall. Unfortunately for me, I got the wall side. When I extricated myself I had absolutely no idea where I was. I was completely disorientated because in my mind I'd done an emergency stop so should still be on the road facing the way I was going. I still have a kind of false memory of the event and when I drive past the site now I think, this is where it happened so this is where I stopped. The sodding big hole in the wall some distance away that still hasn't been repaired says otherwise, but somehow it doesn't compute. I also have memories of "someone" talking to the emergency services which I'm told was me, but it doesn't seem possible. All very strange! Hope you have made a good recovery.

I was 11 on a flight, small aeroplane. I was with my dad the plane was struck by lightning and fell a thousand feet. It just went completely silent, no one screamed like you see on films just complete silence the oxygen masks fell down but we didn't need them. Strangely I felt very calm and didn't feel scared at all

When my DD started having seizures the day after her 1st birthday.

In that moment I went numb. I felt as though this precious life that had been given to me was being taken away right before my eyes.

She now 4 and a half. Seizures have given her brain damage. She has complex needs. She's non-verbal.

My life is silent, and it's deafening.....

I slipped down the stairs with my 2 month old in my arms. I let her go because my "instinct" was to try and steady myself so as to not break my back on the stone steps. She went flying and I remember seeing her fly and I heard her head hit in the ground, it was the same crack an egg makes when it hits the floor. There was silence, I thought I'd killed her. I saw myself in prison for brief moments, all I could think of was how no one would forgive me, I was hysterical. I scooped her up and she started crying, I ran out onto the street and shouted for help, I was beside myself. The paramedics had to give me something to calm me down.

She's now a beautiful 5 year old.

I’m so sorry 💔x

Damn. what happened after? Do you remember hitting the ground?

Finding out on the phone that my husband had hung himself.
Seeing him in the mortuary, I felt “peace” that I knew where he was but also shock.
Having a planned C section with my 3rd child and with my new husband, the anaesthesia went too high and my heart started to beat slower and slower and I felt myself fade out and thought I could feel my first husband and felt comfort from him being there. Dr then have drugs to reverse anaesthetic and I came back round.

@Ryderr 💐 So sorry to read this x

When ds had a seizure, frothing at the mouth, skin turned grey, jerking shaking then just went completely limp not responding to anything. We happened to be at the doctors anyway, and when they checked his heart rate they couldn't detect a pulse and started shouting 'get the resus.' Time literally stopped and everything just went slow motion. Even though I was right there, it felt like I was watching it from afar

@ncforyetanotherone thanks, it is important to share these things, as you say, you just never know. Still makes me feel like ice, if I hadn't turned my head... or I had cut the mango smaller etc.

Weirdly I knew exactly which piece it was as I was rushing, as bloody usual 🙄, and had only cut that particular piece in two rather than four. But remember thinking it will be fine, it's always been fine.

It was the feeling that she came fairly close to dying and it was all my fault that was the total worst feeling ever. And the fact that I was totally alone with her. Ugh. Horrid. Again, I know it had a happy ending, but these things happen so bloody quickly!

I had just given birth to my second. Had a perfect labour and delivery and was on top of the world. Midwife came to do his checks as we were being sent home when she said he was a bit cold. Said to do skin to skin and breastfeed him - which I did and that she would be back soon. Few minutes later I looked down at my perfect boy and he was completely blue and floppy. Shouted for my husband to get the midwife and felt like he was gone hours. This happened to coincide with shift change so he couldn’t find any midwives. I was pushing the bell constantly while screaming for help. I don’t know how long it took for someone to come in but the feeling of fear will never leave me. Luckily the midwife got his colour back within seconds and the room filled up with drs. He is absolutely fine and we were home a couple of days later. I’ll never forget the midwife who delivered him and then hours later saved his life.

Also when my 2 year old fell on concrete and hit her head, she cried then eyes rolled and she started gurgling then stopped breathing. DH was screaming and started running to paramedic neighbour where she then came round. Very traumatic but DH struggled with it for months, he still cries now when he thinks about it.

April 7th 2020

Was informed by a distant contact my extremely violent/horrifically abusive ex had passed away from
Covid.

My phone hit the floor and I quickly followed.... was such a hugely important part of my life but the relief of knowing he could never come hear me again actually made me vomit and then stare into space for hours. The next day oddly enough any anger I had previously held just just disappeared and I felt calmer than I had in years.

Really took a huge amount of time to absorb the news properly but I'd never have predicted how much it shook me.