TTT: Listen to the Voice

Yesterday began as a normal day.  It ended with me crying on and off for almost three hours convinced I was a horrible mother. 

I picked Lukas up from school as normal.  We sang songs and hunted for fire trucks on the ride home.  Daddy was still working when we arrived home, but Wrigley and Bailey were waiting for us.  We went inside and mommy needed to change clothes, so Lukas climbed the stairs to the second floor and raced into my bedroom.  I changed while he ran around singing and taunting the cat.

At some point when I was in my closet changing I heard Lukas ask to "jump bed".  I told him to wait for mommy.  He listened.  He waited.  He played with my dresser draws and shut his middle finger in the door.  He cried loudly.  Big tears welled in his eyes and he held his finger out to me.  I kissed his finger and asked if he still wanted to jump on the bed.  The crying stopped.

"Yes, jump momma." 

"Ok, buddy, you can jump for a bit."

This is normal in our house.  We're all for jumping on the bed.  We're for playing and laughing.

But we must take off our shoes and socks before we jump.  So Lukas sat on the floor and I removed his new green shoes and his Thomas the Train socks.  And I put him in the middle of my bed to jump.

He reached out for my hands, grabbed hold, jumped once and then fell back on his tush.  And then he laughed loudly, happily, wildly.  He loves to jump.  His laughter filled the room.  He jumped more.  Then I flipped him.  He laughed even louder than before.  He jumped again.  I flipped him again.

And then I heard the voice.  You know the one.  The one inside you warning you.  This is so dangerous.  You should stop flipping him this instant.  Why are you doing this?  Stupid.  Bad idea.  But he kept laughing and was so happy.  I ignored the voice.  I suppressed the bad feeling in my gut.

And I flipped him again.  Only this time he didn't laugh.  He looked up at me scared and stunned.  He had landed funny.  He didn't cry. He didn't scream.  He didn't say a word.  He just stared at me frightened.  In that instant I thought he'd broken his neck or somehow hurt himself very badly.  No, I thought I'd done something that hurt him badly.  I thought I'd hurt my precious boy.

He wasn't talking.  He wasn't crying.  In that moment I completely lost it.  Visions of him never walking again floated through my head.  At one point I had the thought, I will surely kill myself if I have hurt him.  I have never been so scared in my life.  My world is this little boy. 

I scooped him up and ran downstairs calling Mr. Cob on the way.  As I ran outside the front door (I think I was going to the neighbors' house to call 911), Mr. Cob pulled up. Through sobs I tried to explain what happened.  I was holding Lukas tight the whole time.  Mr. Cob asked to hold him and Lukas started crying and yelling for momma.  He flailed his arms and started moving normally again.  I tried to put him on the ground to see if he could walk but he would only stand on his tippy toes and cried for me the whole 3 seconds I let him go.  I held him tight again and continued to cry myself.  At least he was talking and moving his arms and legs.  But I was still sure something was very wrong.

We decided we would go to the ER to have him checked.  I didn't have shoes on so I handed Lukas over to Mr. Cob while I ran inside and gathered our things.  Our next door neighbors are both doctors and luckily one of them happened to be walking home from the park with their sons while Mr. Cob was outside waiting for me.  He took a look at Lukas, tried to calm me down and convinced me that Lukas seemed fine.  His husband, the pediatrician, would be home any minute and would come over to really examine Lukas and decide if a hospital visit was warranted.  He stayed with us and tried to distract me.

At some point Lukas asked Mr. Cob to see his dinos.  So we brought him inside and sat him on the couch to play with the dinos.  He quickly bored of the dinos and wanted to play with his baseball bat.  Just like that he hopped off the couch and raced to his room.  He ran back with his bat and was jumping all around, pretending to be a baseball player.  He was perfectly fine.  He was not hurt.  I cried harder.  Uncontrollably.

Our pediatrician neighbor came over and did a full examination of Luke and determined he was fine.  He tried to calm me down.  I continued to cry.  Lukas was not hurt, but the damage had been done to me.

I can honestly say I've never been more scared in my life.  And mad at myself.  Why didn't I listen to the voice telling me to stop?  How could I be so stupid?  I thank God Lukas is OK and I'll never flip him on the bed again.  And from now on I will always, always listen to the voice.

Mother's intuition is real.  You just have to listen to it.  Next time I will be all ears.