Your scariest moment as a parent?

[tangerinemagic]

As a parent or otherwise but I will go first.

I had totally forgotten this had happened, until I read a newspaper article this week regarding an 8 year old girl who tragically died falling from a balcony https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0l473kvkvo.amp

It reminded me of a scenario which was very similar, when DC1 was 2 years old we were on holiday. DH left our hotel apartment with DC1. I needed to finish getting ready, DC1 was on the balcony happily playing with toys and I did a risk assessment, the balcony was a very high glass patrician. I must have left for no longer than 2 min to grab some things from bedroom next to living room (where balcony was) and when I returned he had managed to push a chair on the other side of balcony right up against the glass patrician, and was mid climbing onto it. My heart jumped and it took me weeks to really process it/get over it, that had I have spent 30 seconds longer doing anything he would have been at a height which could have been fatal.

what is your scariest moment as a parent?

As for otherwise not a parent I have another story from my 20s… i also blocked it out undeliberately and remembered it years later and couldn’t believe how different life could have turned out.

AIBU because I cannot find a ‘random’ or ‘general discussion’ topic.

Don't feel ashamed xx

Going from 'she's fine but let's get her checked out' to 'large brain tumour found, going to operate immediately, and it's 50-50 whether it's the type that'll kill her' in the space of 6 hours with my toddler.

She made it. We were in the better type to have

When DS was a week old, we'd done the heel prick test they do for rare diseases. When the Great Ormond Street doctor phoned the next day to say they thought he had an ultra rare disease that meant he'd need a bone marrow transplant and could we please come in the next morning without delay so they could start treatment, I thought it was a dream. It was the worst night I have ever, ever had in my life. We went in the next day and they took blood then put us in a private room to wait for the result. We walked around Bloomsbury in winter, clutching him and stopped at a church to pray. I couldn't hold the tears in.

When we got back to the room, the consultant burst in, said 'everything's fine! He's ok!' Then took him from my arms because she knew I was going to collapse. I promised god that day I would be grateful for every one of my blessings and do my best to do some good in the world. I still have tears roll down my cheeks when I think of it, the thought of my dear, precious defenseless baby being so close to a totally different kind of life.

Mild compared to many here but when she was a day and a half old they couldn't get blood to run a test so said they'd take her to the pediatric ward to get the doctor to do the draw. I was still recovering from three days in labour with no sleep and when the nurse woke me to say they were taking her I said OK and closed my eyes. Less than a minute later they flew open and I struggled out of bed to go with her - I realised I didn't recognise the nurse and I was terrified my baby had been abducted. By the time I got to the door they had left the ward. The babies had ankle monitors but they were so loose they fell off easily. I spent the next hour standing by the ward door crying until she was brought back and of course she was fine and the nurse was legitimate - I'd just not met her before. Why I didn't ask one of the other nurses if I could follow them to the paediatric ward I have no idea, but I was sleep deprived and full of hormones and convinced I'd failed my brand new baby at the first challenge. I still feel guilty that I didn't go with her.

When DD stepped in front of a car on the way to school. I grabbed her then burst into tears. The car was inches from her, poor driver.

I have a son who just turned 21. He's just on the cusp of everything. I am so very very lucky, and so very sorry about your boy.

When dd was born, she had shoulder dystocia. After they freed her, they spent what felt like a very long time resuscitating her on the tiny baby table next to me. She's fine thank goodness, but I was like a crazy person, crying for my baby.

This year, my son finally had his tonsillectomy. Despite an a&e visit on day 7 post surgery because he still wasn't eating or drinking, screaming hourly overnight, we were sent home and told to continue to alternate ibuprofen and paracetamol. A few days later he starts bleeding horrifically, choking on the blood, crying that he's dying and he's never going to see us again (he's 6). Ambulance ride later and lots of meds (including the morphine we had asked for at a&e) and the next day he's back on the sausage rolls and crisps. That one was fucking terrifying.

So many, and far too many trips to A&E! But DS is incredibly accident prone, he could literally trip over air!

Two I can think of. We lived in a house with a side gate, and the bin men (back in the day when people had actual dustbins) had been to collect the bin and unbeknownst to me, had not closed the gate. My MIL was coming, so I was tidying round frantically and my DD crawled out of the back door. I didn’t worry, thought she would be fine for a couple of minutes which she would have been had the gate been shut, but it wasn’t - a neighbour brought her back in after she’d got as far as the pavement at the front of the house. I still thank my lucky stars over that one - she could have crawled into the road. The other was also a road-related one: I was crossing the road with DD and twins in double buggy on the way to school. We waited for the green man and started to cross when a lorry whose driver clearly hadn’t seen the light just thundered straight over the crossing. I saw him coming and yelled to my daughter to stop - it missed her by a fag-paper. I can still turn pale at 3 am thinking about that one, and how very different it might have been.

When my son had a cardiac arrest just over a year ago at the age of 8. He was gone for 20 minutes and I was certain that I had lost him.

Closely followed by the next few days where I was repeatedly told to prepare myself for the worst and then the following week when he was diagnosed with cancer.

my daughter suffered encephalitis of the brain after an mmr booster list everything speech understanding was told she would never recover six months later she did very scary as a parent was 25 years ago but you are never the same person as you once were

Gosh some of these stories are traumatising.

My relatives son was killed (murdered but still an open case) at 4 years old. Vanished when she turned her back for a minute whilst at a house viewing in a very large home. He was found drowned in a well on the grounds a few hours later with a steel lid over the top which couldn’t have possibly been removed and replaced by him. Sickens me to think of what she’s been through.

When dd rang me and her ex was beating her I heard her screaming please stop please don't do it . Then i heard tje most awful scream and the phone went dead. I honestly thought he had killed her. She was OK thank God. But at the time I didn't know that.

2 years ago my then 5 and 3 year olds were playing in their bedroom, they had bunk beds and the 5 year old fell off the top bunk, head first. She screamed a scream I’ve never heard before, I ran in and she was grey, covered in blood and then was sick. I threw her in the car and we spent a night in hospital (it was New Year’s Day as well!)
She recovered really well but has been left with a scar on her back where she scraped it on the bed as she fell. Who knew a back could bleed so much!

My son is nearly 21 now. But twice when he was younger I had to do back slaps to save him from choking. The second time when he was about 4 , we both burst into tears after he had coughed it up and returned to a normal colour from being blue. It scared me so much.

I have had a lot from my ds 3 with no sense of danger . He runs faster than me and am very anxious I take him in the car everywhere now. Stressful!!!!

Aged 6 weeks, took dd to get weighed at the local weigh-in centre. She was on the changing mat on the floor, I stood up to pop old nappy in the bin, tripped and very nearly crushed her beneath my own foot. Ended up only brushing her arm with my foot. She didn't notice. I crumpled in tears on the floor however...

Snorkelling at a fabulous coral reef in Australia. My DD (9) who was an incredibly competent swimmer and had experience snorkelling had a panic attack whilst we were in pretty deep water. We started swimming back to shore but I genuinely recall
looking at all the families on the beach as we were struggling back in and thinking ‘this is how people drown, we aren’t flailing around we’re just sinking’
It was absolutely awful.
Depressingly the terror was topped by a god awful
quadbiking experience a couple of days later. We lived but the trauma lives on.

I am so sorry to hear that pp 😔 xx

I've had three, one for a different child each time.
First one, in the "good old days" when strapping the carrycot into the back seat was considered safe to transport babies, my abusive ex decided he was taking the baby and himself "away and I would never see them again" he shoved my 8 week old into the carrycot and ran to the car. Then he put it on the roof to open the doors, forgot what he was doing, got in the car, started it up, and made to drive off.
I swear I moved faster than Usain Bolt, screaming like a banshee, and just managed to grab one handle of the carrycot as he wheel-spin away.
2nd one Years later, after I got with my now DH, when DS was born, the hospital fucked uo, and as he was born there was silence. The midwife stayed calm, then hit the button on the wall and ran out of the room and shouted for assistance.
We were in complete shock, and then someone asked us what religion we are, and asked if we wanted them to fetch a vicar. I have never prayed so hard in my life! I'm the end my almost 10lb baby was wedged into an incubator in the NICU with all the teeny tiny babies, and once an actual doctor who knew what they were doing arrived, he was fine.
Third one my just gone 14 year old had what we thought was a stroke. He was blue lighted to the Great North Children's Hospital and was unconscious for a well on the Neuro paediatric ward. When he woke up, he was blind in one eye, couldn't walk, vomited everything he ate or drank, has no strength, and hardly any motor control.
It was lockdown, we had no money so dh could only visit once a week, and they don't feed parents, only patients. The one shop that was open was charging a fiver for a shifty prepacked sarnie! A kind night shift nurse noticed I wasn't eating and smuggled me leftovers. I don't know what I'd have done otherwise.
If never go through anything like any of those times again, I'll be happy.

I was feeding my days-old daughter at two in the morning. She’d been keeping her hands pretty clenched since she was born, and as I stretched out her fingers on one hand, I realized that the middle one was only about half as long as the ones on either side of it. No one had noticed this at the hospital.

I started panicking because I had no idea if it was indicative of some larger syndrome, like how people with Down syndrome have flatter faces and short necks. When we brought her to the doctor’s, someone actually said, “Oh - we’ve never seen this before,” which really didn’t help my anxiety! It turns out it’s just a random birth defect that’s not indicative of anything else. She has all the bones in her finger, but the ones between the knuckles are short.

My now 21yo DD was a really good walker when little and used to walk well with me and always held my hand crossing roads etc. Until the day we were walking home from the supermarket. There’s a busy road with a crossing with no lights and a bit in the middle of the road to wait. She was absolutely fine at those bits but then there’s a small bit of grass and then another quieter road just after it. It was on the grass that she suddenly let go of my hand and ran right into the quiet road, but just as a 4x4 was flying down it. I couldn’t move my legs to chase her. I was just screaming her name and I’ve honestly never been so glad that the driver slammed on the brakes and avoided hitting her. It was 17/18 years ago but I can still hear the noise of the brakes and get chills when I think about it. The size of the car compared to the size of her I don’t think she’d have stood a chance if the car hadn’t stopped.

Staying in a hotel directly on the beach in Rimini. My son was 6 at the time and somehow managed to give me the slip as we were lumbering onto the beach with buckets, spades etc. I walked up and down the beach calling his name and several other guests from the hotel joined in. After 5 minutes or so I was shaking uncontrollably and felt sick to my core. A German lady (guest of the hotel) then lifted the tarpaulin on a small fishing boat near to us and there he was - hiding! I hugged him with tears streaming down my face and then did the same to the German lady.

We were throwing the ball to our son on the trampoline, he’d throw back etc. good way to practice catching, had done it so many times but we hadn’t noticed the wear and tear at the back which had meant the net had a hole in it. He flew out the back, smacked his head on the ground and was hugely disoriented. We rushed him to A&E, only I was allowed in (Covid times). They didn’t want to CT scan him if they could avoid it (he was 8), he’d vomited in the waiting room but they were rushed off their feet. At midnight they put us on a ward, he had never had a Covid test before and they wouldn’t let him on the children ward without it, that was very traumatic for him poor thing; I had to pin him down, I’ll never forgive myself for that. He was brilliant, bless him. They said concussion and we went home next day.

When my twins were born at 30 weeks, the doctor told us weeks later (they were in NICU for two months) she doesn’t know how they survived. Have never shared thier brand newborn pictures as the wires in the incubator were unreal. Couldn’t hold one for 5 days, the other 6.

when I lost one of the twins at eurocamp in france. I’d told all three of my boys - they had an 11 month older bro - to go and get thier shoes on as it was lunchtime.
lost Thomas for a good ten minutes…. About to ring the police after SCREAMING my way around the pool area.
he was in his pushchair with his shoes on ready for lunch. We just weren’t used to them doing as they were told! Was terrifying though as much as I can make a joke of it now.