Falling Down, and Getting Up Again

These are the scary basement steps that our dog, Coltrane, refuses to go down. Nothing, not even a raw steak, will get him down these steps.

These are the scary basement steps that freaked my sister out when she came to visit last June, and she begged me not to carry the laundry up and down them while I was pregnant.

These are the scary basement steps that my son rolled down, barrel-style, on St. Patrick's Day.


I was cooking dinner. Super-Hubby had gone downstairs to get some tools for home improvement. Somehow, the ancient door didn't latch all the way. Our house is 90 years old, and we still have most of the original hardware on our interior doors. It looks cool, but it's not so great for keeping things closed.

Tommy, with his insatiable 7-month-old curiosity, decided to check out the box of corn starch on the bottom shelf of the "pantry." And then I heard ca-thunck, ca-thunck, ca-thunck, followed by some loud, panicked screaming.

I'm not entirely sure the screaming wasn't mine.

We did the broken bones check, the blood check, the bruises check. Nothing. He calmed down within minutes, but I called the pediatrician, just to make sure Tommy was ok. My regular, laid-back, I've-seen-it-all pediatrician wasn't on call, so I was referred to another doctor.

"How, exactly, did a 7-month-old fall down the stairs?" he asked incredulously, in a tone of voice that suggested he thought I might have thrown my son down the stairs.

"He's very mobile, and the door was left ajar by accident."

"It is very unusual for a 7-month-old to be that mobile," he said. "Are you sure that's what happened?"

Because of Tom's age, the doctor said we should take him to the ER for an exam. So we bundled up our perfectly happy, healthy baby and headed out. I was terrified the
ER doctors were going to call Child Protective Services on us after my conversation with the pediatrician, but to the ER we went anyway.

The nice resident at the ER gave my laughing, raspberry-blowing baby a quick once over and said nothing looked amiss. She said we could take him home and monitor him, or she could give him a CAT scan, if we wanted. We opted to take him home.

I have never been one to make a big deal out of routine falls and bumps. When Tommy falls down from a stand and startles himself into a fuss, I clap and cheer. Pretty soon, he is smiling and going about his business - and learning that the little bumps in life aren't really so bad. But I really wasn't prepared for these bigger bumps.

That weekend, we put up baby gates like maniacs. We were extra careful to make sure the basement door was shut. For the first time in my life as a parent, I began to act like all those paranoid mothers I always make fun of, in my head.

And that weekend, Tommy started pulling up.

Enter exhibit 2: The crib that Tommy climbed/fell out of on Wednesday.



I was downstairs folding laundry, and Tommy was napping. I heard him wake up, heard his happy babble as he conversed with his new friends, Kanga and Roo.

Then I heard a THUNK and a scream.

I picked him up, he quieted. My heart raced and my arms trembled. He laughed and pulled my hair, tried to stick his fingers up my nose. My knees trembled.

Somehow Tommy had managed to pull up far enough on his crib rail to flip himself over. It was my fault, because the mattress wasn't in the lowest position. I didn't think he could get out, yet. I was wrong.

My son was fine, but on Thursday, I was still trembling. It's Friday, and I can still feel a quiver of fear sliding up my spine as I write this.

I was reading The Girlfriend's Guide to Surviving the First Year and she writes about how mothers are the ones in society who keep superstitions going. We are the ones that say "God bless you" when you sneeze. We knock wood. We wait, expectantly, for the other shoe to drop.

And so, I find myself waiting for the third fall.

I know it's coming, I just don't know when, or where. And I pray that it won't do anything to seriously injure my precious, precious boy.