The Day My Baby Crawled Off My Bed

So, my baby is finally crawling! I say “finally” because he took his time, waiting until he was close to 10 months old. We did everything we could think of to encourage him, but as I’ve written about before, we just had to wait until he was ready. And he was definitely ready. He went from being pretty much stationary, not even scooting, to full-on, on-all-fours crawling, in about 3 days. And now I’m wondering what I was so excited about.

Moms know that once your baby starts crawling, it’s a whole new world. Gone are the days when you could leave your baby sitting on the floor with some toys for a couple of minutes while you went and put laundry in the dryer, or used the restroom, returning to find them just where you left them. Baby-proofing commences, and the pack n play takes up permanent residence in your living room, if it hasn’t already. I was expecting these developments, more or less, but there was one thing I didn’t think about much: my kid is now getting hurt a lot more.

All of a sudden, as he tests the limits of his newfound mobility (he’s also working on pulling up), navigating around toys and furniture, there are a lot more little bumps to the head or face. It’s hard to watch. I do my best to anticipate these incidents but I obviously cannot predict the future and brief wails and tears can ensue several times a day. Fortunately, most of these incidents have been minor.

Except that one time. When my son crawled off my bed.

Yep. It happened. It was a typical morning after my husband had left for work and I had William sitting in the middle of our queen-sized bed while I got dressed. I had done this a million times before. I never took my eyes off of him for more than a couple of seconds, but while my back was turned, I heard a thunk, followed by a wail, and I whirled around to find my son on the floor.

Oh my goodness, that was a bad day. I didn’t see the fall, but my poor baby ended up with a bruise on his forehead so I knew he had hit his head. I felt absolutely horrible. He got over it in a few minutes, but I beat myself up about it all day. I monitored him closely and Googled “concussions in babies”. I checked on him every 20 minutes or so during his naps that day, and paid close attention to how much he was eating. And he was fine. I was way more upset than he was (thankfully, babies have very short memories!). That afternoon I called his pediatrician’s office just to make sure I was covering my bases, what the nurse jokingly referred to as a “guilt call,” meaning I was pretty sure he was all right but I just felt like I should call anyway.

I did my best to brush it off. After all, accidents happen, kids get hurt, and this certainly wouldn’t be his last injury, but I felt horribly guilty for allowing him to fall.  Lesson learned: no more hanging out on mommy and daddy’s bed without close supervision! But I learned that I needed to let it go and forgive myself. I am doing my very best to protect my baby and take good care of him, and fortunately he is just fine and suffered no lasting injury. So I’m letting myself off the hook — a hard thing for moms to do, but an important habit to get into. I’ve also learned that kids are tough! As a kind mother shared with me, they are built to withstand our mistakes, and thank goodness for that!