Seton Baby Talk

I’m a mom. What that means in a nutshell is that I’m superwoman. Or at least I’m trying to be. My husband and I were talking just the other night about how it’s so hard to stay on top of things in our household. We are constantly doing laundry. The washing machine is going and I’m staring at a pile of clothing that’s in line. When that pile is done there’s another hamper in another room to take its place, and it goes on and on. The dishes pile up in the sink even though we have a dishwasher. The dishwasher is full and going and the sink is full. The constant hubbub of the never ending amount of work to be done to keep the household running is sometimes overwhelming. When things get overwhelming and there seems to be not enough time in the day to complete all the tasks at hand is the time it seems things start falling through the cracks.

I was perusing some tweets the other day and came across one calling for prayers for a baby named Bronson. I went to that Mommy’s blog and absolutely burst into tears when I read what had happened. What happened in her house could have happened to almost any Mommy out there. She put her 15 month old in the bathtub, along with his older brother by just a year, and walked away for “just a minute” to finish some laundry. After getting sidetracked for a moment or two more with the other items taking up her already full plate of things to do, one of her children was screaming for her. Bronson had slipped and gone under and when she ran into the bathroom, she found her baby lifeless and unresponsive, his older brother, still a baby himself at 3 trying to hold his little brother above the water, apologizing and saying he had tried to get him out. Reading the story absolutely broke my heart into a million little pieces. I burst into tears and bawled my eyes out at this little boy’s story and the story of his family.

I’m a busy mom. I’ve got a million things on my mind and a million things on my plate, and after reading the story of Bronson and his family wonder how many times something could have fallen through the cracks that shouldn’t. I am a freak about bath time and will not leave the bathroom for even a minute when Owen is taking a bath, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen to me. Our family, like a lot of Texan families, has a pool in our backyard. We have dogs and doggie door. There was one time. One sliver of a moment when I turned my back for one minute, and turned back around to find Owen in the backyard, having followed his pets out the dog door. My heart fell to my feet and I rushed out the back door and grabbed Owen, only a few feet from the door, and still 15 feet from the pool, but 15 feet too close.

We do have precautions in place now. The door from the kitchen to the laundry room with the doggie door is constantly closed and locked with a chain lock too high for small fingers to reach. The dogs let us know in the evenings when we are home if they need to go out by sitting in front of that door. During the day when Owen is at school the door is left open for the dogs to come in and out as they please. This summer after reading Bronson’s story, I’m putting money into survival swim lessons for Owen. The lessons teach babies as young as 6 months how to roll over onto their backs and float should they fall in the pool, lake, tub or any body of water. This will hopefully put my mind at a little more ease.

I’m happy to report that after following Bronson’s Mommy’s blog for the past week that Bronson is mostly out of the woods. He is back in the sense that his Mommy and Daddy see him again in every sense of the word, but just knowing it could have gone the other way and it could have been me (or many other moms out there) is enough for me to take time to remember that the dishes can wait. The laundry can wait. Those are the things that I’m okay with falling through the cracks. My little guy? He’s the number one priority and the rest can wait.

You can read Bronson’s story by clicking here. You can find information on Infant Swim Lessons by clicking here. Read from our Resource Center about Baby Safety at home here.