Lost baby!

[JanZ]

Just wanted to share the experience - and feeling of shock and guilt!

We nearly lost ds yesterday - literally!

I left the house very early to drive down to Leeds for a business meeting - it was pouring as I left. While dh had his shower, ds got bored watching him and wandered off - dh thought into the lounge to play with various toys. Having got out the shower, he couldn't find him anywhere in the house - upstairs or downstairs (we don't use stair gates as we've trained him to climb/go down safely).

He went downstairs and saw I'd left the outside door open (the heavy rain must have distracted me) - and as the inner door has a pane of glass taken out so that the cats can get to the cat flap, he thought "oops - ds has escaped!". He had a look outside but couldn't see anything - went back upstairs, searched the house again, looked outside again - still no baby.

Then he thought he could hear a cat - which (ours are Siamese) often sounds like a baby, so he went outside again. This time he could hear ds but couldn't see him.

Following the sound, he found him at the other side of the house next door - wet and muddy and distressed.

We think what happened is that he followed the the route that he uses when we walk him home from the childminder - ie down the driveway, turn right along the pavement and up the next driveway. Perfectly logical - but then he found he wasn't at "his" house! (Childminder lives the OTHER side). He wasn't muddy enough, we think, to have gone the "direct" route through the two gardens.

God knows what a car driving down the road (fortunately a very quiet one!) would have thought at the site of a 17 month old in a wee yellow sleepsuit, toddling along the pavement at 7.15 in the morning!

Dh got a big fright - but ds seems none the worse for it! As far as ds was concerned, it just seems to have been a big adventure. But for us, all the "what-ifs" go through your head.

Wheg I rang dh at about 7.30 and got told about this "adventure", for the rest of the drive to Leeds, I couldn't stop thinking about it - and again on the drive home! If something has happened to him.... and it would have been my fault. Dh went home in the afternoon - partly to get on with some work away from the office but also because the shock had hit him and he was feeling awful!

As well as now making doubly sure that we shut the outside door, we'll be adapting the missing pane of glass to make it more "cat" sized as opposed to baby sized!

On the funny side, apparently I did a similar thing at a similar age - turned up on my granny's door step minus nappy, having walked through a herd of cattle! But at least I would have been warm as it was in South Africa!

Oops (again!) - I meant "sight of a 17 month old", not "site" of 17 month old. You don't get to preview when you're starting a new thread.

What a shock for you - thank goodness no harm was done. When my brother was 11 months old, he crawled all the way to our front gate and half way down the road before the baker found him and brought him back to my mother who hadn't even noticed his absence.

Janz - how frightening for you, but the main thing is he's ok. Stop torturing yourself with the 'what-ifs' or you'll drive yourself mad (I should know, I'm always doing it myself!) and you've taken action to make sure it won't happen again. They're so quick at that age! Kids eh, who'd 'ave 'em?

I did the same when I was 18mths - we'd moved house and I couldn't see out of the gate. A neighbour brought me back saying ' Does THIS belong to you'...not 'is this your child?'
Don't torture yourself, think positiviely you're showing how much you care for ds and you have the opportunity to shop it happening again.

I expect alot of us mothers know that gut wrenching feeling of losing our child albeit sometimes only for moments - I lost my son when he was about 2 1/2 at a toys exhibition at Earls Court of all places - he ran off I followed but he disappeared in the crowd - fantastic staff at exhibition had him back with me in a matter of minutes but the feeling stayed with me for months of how anything could of happened and how I nearly lost him I was very shaken up and the feeling stayed with me for so long but it did eventually wear off but obviously I'm more vigilent now dont let him out of my sight especially in crowds - the feeling will pass dont worry and take care

Just to say JanZ, my Mum lost me when I was a toddler, left me in the back garden and I managed to squeeze through the gate and was happily crawling off down the road when someone found me. They rang on my Mum's doorbell and said 'is she yours?', my Mum nearly fainted but now just tells the story barely controlling her laughter so you do get over it!!!
My Mum's full of great stories like this, threading the baby listener alarm through to the neighbours house so she and my Dad could go to the pub, leaving us in the car whilst drinking in the pub, etc!!! I think/hope!!! we're perfectly adjusted kids and I too laugh at her stories now so think about how you can laugh and tell your son this story when he's grown up!

I'm glad everything ended well, Janz - I've been there, too! A small child called at my door one day to tell me my baby was crawling up the middle of our road - eek!!! Big brother had opened the door and non-walking little bro decided to make his escape. I'd forgotten about it until you posted your message this morning.

Just thought I'd let you know of a friend of mine who walked to the shops with baby in the buggy and walked home again minus baby and buggy having got completely distracted by elder child. She didn't realise until half an hour later ran back to the shops in tears only to find said baby fast asleep in her buggy being looked after by the shop assistant. She was mortified at the time, felt everyone was thinking she was the worst mum alive, but now she can laugh about it espcially when she sees me doing something equally scatty.
Glad everything turned out ok Janz.

My friend and her two sisters were teenagers when their baby brother was born. Their mum sent them shopping, with the baby. Guess what they came home without?! This was maybe 25 years ago, they rushed back to the supermarket and found him still asleep in his pram outside!!

Wow Janz, lucky you! A friend of mine thought she had lost her 2yr old son, thinking he had escape out the back garden while they were having building work done. She called her dh to come home from work and her neighbours to help find him. After half an hour she was distraught and about to call the police. Suddenly she noticed, behind a pile of bricks in the garden, a little face popping up and flew over to her son. The reason he had hidden there was because he had done a poo in his pants and thought she would be mad with him! There must be a moral in there somewhere

I have lost both of mine on separate occasions both at school fetes. They were both found on bouncy castles can you believe, neither had paid to go on and this happened about 3 years apart. Weird. R

I lost my three yr old today in Tescos. One minute he's behind me - then gone! I was fairly calm for about 30 seconds until I'd looked up about three aisles either side of where I was and there was no sign of him. My enternal worry is that they'll either wander outside or that someone has snatched them. (A particularly frightening story was related to me about a child who went missing in a supermarket and was found in the ladies with a totally different set of clothes on and a woman cutting his hair!!) Having informed a member of staff and given a description my son than wandered around the corner of an aisle with a cheeky grin on his face. Relief was not the word! I have lost all three of mine at one time or another (careless mother that I am!) but the worst had to be when we lost my daughter aged 3 at the time in Italy. She had wandered out of two sets of heavy doors in a dept. store and onto a busy main street when we found her.

We're now starting to laugh about it - and it will be a good story to tell ds when he is older. The muddy sleepsuit has now been washed, although dh wanted me to keep it as a memento!

Thanks for everyone else's stories!

One thing I have thought of is that we should make a better effort to get to know the neighbours, so that if he DOES escape again, at least they would know who he "belongs" to!