Sorry for the cringe-worthy title. But I need your attention. This is the story of the day my daughter got crushed by a 300-pound dresser.
One morning last year, I was lying in bed while my husband prepared to leave for a work trip and my daughter (age 2 at the time) was playing in our room. I was awake and watching her. She was at our dresser in our master bedroom and she began pulling the drawers out one by one. I didn’t think a THING of it. She wasn’t climbing on them, she was just pulling some of the drawers out. The dresser is much longer than it is tall, meaning I didn’t think it was “at risk.” But, it was not anchored to the wall.
Despite all the warnings and knowing better, we didn’t have one piece of large furniture in our entire house anchored to the wall.
As I’m watching her pull the drawers out, I must have looked away for a milli-second. But when my eyes went back to her, she was standing in the shadow of our 300-pound solid wood dresser as it was falling over on top of her. I’ve never moved so fast in my life, but it still wasn’t fast enough. She was maybe 4 feet away from me. By the time I got to her, the dresser had pinned her up against the foot of our bed.
Thank God my husband was still home because as I was trying (and failing) to lift the dresser off of her, I screamed bloody murder and my husband was able to come in and help me. He got the dresser off of her pretty quickly. I scooped her up immediately and told my husband we were going to the ER, like, now. She was crying and obviously very scared but besides some bumps and scrapes, she appeared to be physically ok. Of course, all I could think about was internal bleeding, or crushed ribs, etc, etc.
Bra-less and with unbrushed hair and teeth… we rushed her to the ER I’m surprised I managed to get shoes on, and I can laugh about it a little bit now. Over the next 4 hours, she was x-rayed and checked out from head to toe. Only by the grace of God did my little 30-pound baby girl walk away from being crushed by a 300-pound dresser without more than a scratch. I mean, read that last sentence again. It can really only be explained as a miracle. We got so incredibly lucky that day.
We also learned a really hard lesson.
I’m all about child safety and preventing “preventable accidents.” It’s kind of my thing. Car seat safety, water safety and drowning, safe sleep habits. I do all the things to try and keep my kid as safe as reasonably possible. But for whatever reason, I thought I was immune to this type of accident. I always thought it was probably so rare. I thought it would require a big, heavy kid to be scaling a tall dresser. I thought it would happen to unsupervised children. And to be completely honest, I didn’t want to put a bunch of holes in my walls for no reason. I mean the odds were so slim, right?
Well that day, my very small child was simply pulling drawers out of a dresser that is much longer than it is tall. Certainly not the type of furniture I associated with these types of accidents. I was in the same room watching her! So I was proven completely wrong. My mind still wanders sometimes and I think “what if that happened in the middle of the night and I didn’t wake up for some reason?” (because #momlife is a tired one.) Or what if it would have happened after my husband left and I wouldn’t have been able to lift the dresser off of her? Or what if I would have been taking the trash out and she was inside for a harmless 10 minutes by herself? It could have been a lot worse, my friends.
On average, one child dies every 10 days when a TV or furniture falls onto him or her.
Learn from my mistake. If it could tip, anchor it. Don’t wonder if it’s worth it or if you’re putting holes in your walls for no reason. Don’t think it couldn’t happen to you. Don’t assume it’s uncommon. And don’t wait until it’s too late.
