Henry, the gymnast

After a protracted period of time, I am now able to discuss this.

It was later in the evening and Mark had gone off to play hockey.  I really only had about half an hour to watch the boy prior to putting him down for the night.  This was before he started really moving around, so I was still swaddling him and leaving him on the couch.  Henry was in said position, against the inside of the couch with a pillow blocking his exit route when I stepped into the kitchen (likely to get a greasy late night snack, but that's beside the point).

I then hear the worst sound that I have ever heard.  THUD.  The sound of my baby falling from the couch onto the rug.

I dropped whatever I was holding and rushed to get to him.  He actually settled very quickly and appeared unharmed.  I, however, sobbing uncontrollably, garnered all of the skills that I had learned from an education of 5 years of rehab school, 15 seasons of ER and too many late nights on the self-diagnostic medical websites.  I checked his muscle tone, his pupils for equal dilation, and as many cranial nerves as I could.  I checked his ears and his mouth (in case he had knocked out some teeth he didn't have yet).  I did full range of motion testing on all of his joints and palpated his abdomen.   He seemed entirely unhurt. 

Now what do I do?  I felt like an utter failure.  My next stream of panicked thought regarded whether or not I should call the police on myself, having been such a neglectful mother.   No, I reason, they'll certainly come and take him away and put him in a foster home that will only want him for the government money and make him work in a little sweatshop in their shed producing those soapstone carvings you see in all of the gift shops here.  (I know there are wonderful foster homes, but that's not where my mind was at the time).

Seeing no rational option, I decide to Google "my baby fell off the couch".  I am still somewhat concerned that even doing this will trigger some computer-linked child welfare alarm and the police will show up at my house and remove my child.  At this point, however, I'm starting to regain my composure a bit.  Henry is playing quietly while lying next to me on our bed.  Nowhere near the edge.

It's pretty funny what comes up if you Google "my baby fell off the couch".  I did get some good advice that basically said to watch for signs of a head injury, but that he was likely OK given that it was only about 18 inches onto a soft surface. 

But I was amazed to find all sorts of variations of "my baby fell off the couch."  There was "my baby fell off our waterbed", "my baby fell down 13 uncarpeted stairs", "I was carrying my baby and I fell on him", "my baby fell off the change table and sort of into the diaper pail" and all sorts of other traumatic stories. 

My spirits were raised when I saw that the Google search returned over 48,000,000 results.  I felt like I had brothers and sisters in folly. 

I fretted until Mark got home and relayed the story.  He, in his awesome Mark way, just says "geez, I thought I'd be the first one to do that".

I've since talked to other moms about this and it appears it's not uncommon.  Even I fell off things as a baby, which probably explains a few things.