"Dropped"

I dropped my baby.


Before I get too far…it wasn’t that bad. It’s not like the “did your mom drop you as a baby?” kind of bad. Here’s what happened, but first some background:

Kaelyn will be 14 months old this weekend, but she is a small child, only weighing 18 pounds. She was small at birth, due to her being premature, at only 5 lbs. She was below the charts, but quickly gained weight to be somewhere between the 5 and 10 percentile (25% for height) and she has grown steadily on that curve since (though I think she’s starting to jump…she gained a whole pound in just one month…which I think is a lot for this stage). Anyway, because she is still less than 20 lbs, we have not switched her car seat to face forward. We are looking for two new car seats because she is outgrowing her current one, but because we technically can’t face her forward yet, still use the infant car seat. Most of the time, the car seat just stays in the car and we carry her (or she moves herself) wherever we go. But, when I take her to the sitter, I leave the infant seat with her. That way, she can use it to take Kaelyn out and about during the day.

This morning, as I was dropping Kaelyn off, I got a huge sense of just how tired I really am. I was thinking how great it was that it’s Friday and even though we’ll probably all get home late again this evening (I still need to take the bus back to the airport), that at least I didn’t have anywhere to be too early tomorrow morning and could just relax a little bit. Marissa, our sitter’s four year old, opened the front door before I walked up and rushed out to meet us. Because my mind was wandering, she threw me off guard a little bit. As we approached the door, both Diana (our sitter) and her youngest daughter (who’s two) met us at the door. Marissa and her sister, though, stayed under my feet. So, as I was bending to put Kaelyn, still in her seat, on the floor, she slipped out of my hands (I will stress buckled in her seat) and the seat hit the floor a little hard (maybe fell an inch). The seat wobbled a little bit, but she landed right side up.

I will never forget this moment.

My sweet little girl looked up at me with her giant blue eyes; her mouth formed this perfect little sad face, and then came the tears. They were her tears, but I had to fight hard to hold mine back. I scooped her up and kissed her tear stained cheeks, but her sad cry just broke my heart. I know she’s ok, but the guilt will never subside. Marissa, still standing underneath me made the following comment “Mommy, baby Kaelyn’s mom dropped her!” And even though her mom corrected her…I didn’t really drop her, the damage was done. I dropped my baby.

Kaelyn was still crying when I left…and not crying because I was leaving, but crying over being “dropped”. The last thing I saw as I left for work, was her looking at Diana and pointing to her seat as if to say “the seat is making me cry”. At least she wasn’t pointing to me. Still, my heart is broken.