Did you child proof your home?  I didn’t and I learned my lesson the hard way.  I foolishly believed that all would be fine and I didn’t need to be a paranoid parent.  I think I just never thought it through.  I’ve pretty much kept this to myself because I’ve been ashamed to admit how stupid I had been but when Safety 1st (a company that focuses on making the world a safer place for babies and kids) got in touch and asked me to share my story in order to spread the word about how important child safety is, I couldn’t say no.

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon a couple of years ago when Anya was nearly 3 years old.  I went out while my husband Richard stayed home with Anya.  As I walked back home my phone rang.  It was Richard and I was sure he was calling to ask me to pick up something on my way home.  When I answered I immediately knew something was wrong, very wrong.  He said something along the lines of  ‘Anya’s cut her head, she’s bleeding heavily, we need to get to the hospital.”  I ran home and found my baby covered in blood and sobbing uncontrollably.  She had slit her forehead open on the corner of the coffee table and the wound looked awful.

Of course we rushed to the emergency room and after an initial check we were asked to wait.  In the meantime Anya had perked up quite a bit and was jumping around the waiting room much to the horror of the other parents who were staring at this little child covered in blood but playing as if all was well with the world.  But this reassured Richard and me.  We could see that while the cut was bad, she was fine.  Big, huge sigh of relief.  A while later 3 nurses glued her forehead back together (apparently they don’t uses stitches on kids anymore) while blowing bubbles to keep Anya distracted.  The doctor checked her over and said even though the wound looked really bad, it was superficial and all was well.  Thank you NHS.

Lesson learned and how.  According to the New York Times, turns out that coffee tables are one of the biggest hazards for kids inside the home.  Those foam corner guards may not be pretty but if you have a wooden coffee table, you need them.  If you have a glass coffee table, get rid.  And if like me, you’re naive enough to believe that you don’t need at least some amount of child proofing within the home, think again.  I wish I had.  Anya still has a scar and each time I look at it I feel terrible for allowing something so awful to happen to her especially when it could easily have been avoided.

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{top photo by ebabee, bottom photo by Juliana of Captured by Juliana for ebabee}