Another one - I nipped upstairs to the loo, leaving a just-crawling ds1 in the childproofed dining room and kitchen. As I was on the loo, I heard a baby crying outside - I assumed the neighbours had a baby visiting - but when I got downstairs I found ds1 stuck half in, half out of the cat flap. His feet couldn’t touch the floor in the kitchen and he couldn’t touch the ground outside! I had to open the door very carefully, and basically deliver him, through the cat flap.
He also ate tortilla chips out of the bin. He was right in the worst of the terrible twos, and having had a massive 90 minute tantrum the night before, he was heading into 45 minutes of his next tantrum, and it wasn’t 8am yet. I was on the phone to dh, sobbing that I couldn’t cope - when it went quiet. Quiet, with a toddler, is always a danger sign. I hung up, and found ds1 at the bin, eating the left over tortilla chips dh and I hadn’t eaten the night before, and had thrown away.
But that wasn’t the worst part - I looked at him, and I knew that, if I took him away from his delicious bin-snack, he would start tantrumming again, and I simply could not face it (I was heavily pregnant with ds2 at the time), so I let him carry on eating. When he’d had enough, and wandered off, I emptied the bin, and found somewhere childproof to keep it from then on. But whenever someone says they must be the worst mum in the world, I trot this story out, to show them they definitely aren’t.
Oh, and ds1 survived utterly unscathed, and is now nearly 30, has a degree, a good job, a lovely wife and a daughter, so even my terrible parenting didn’t damage him irreparably.