Devastated at my poor supervision of my kids

[THBVsMama]

So glad your LO is okay.

Anything can happen if you're not careful 100% of the time. The other week I was holding my DD in the living room. I wasn't watching where I was going and ended up stepping on one of DS' toys. My foot twisted and DD flung back from my movement and fell out of my arms. Thank GOD DH just so happened to be RIGHT behind me. He grabbed DD before she hit the ground. I was petrified. The way she flung back, she would have hit her head on our TILE floor, had DH not have been right there

Afterwards I just sat on the floor and sobbed like a baby thinking of all the what ifs.

[CherryPie]

How scary. I am paranoid about this so I don't go to our pool alone with more than 2 kids (at their current ages). I don't feel comfortable having only me with 3 or 4 of my kids. I'll go with all 4 if I have DH, a friend or my mom with me.

[Riley-Madison]

we have 6 kids and out of them 2 can swim. I know how hard it is to make sure you have an eye on everyone while at the pool. here's a little trick for next time. make sure everyone ( including you ) is ready for the pool before you get there, swimsuits, sunscreen, floaties and whatever else they need. We also have a rule that nobody leaves our side until we give then the go-ahead to get into the pool.

I'm sure it wont make you feel any better, but I'll share with you my little moment of bad pool safety.
my son and daughter are both the same size (ish) but my dd weighs more. she never goes into the big pool, but her brother does and his vest works great. she wears the same vest...but obviously in 6" of water she doesnt really get much use out of it.

well she climbed into the big pool. yea! shewas holding onto the side and kept climbing in and out.
i decided I dould put her in just a little further from the edge so she could see that her vest would hold her up, and she could swim that way.

so we are "play fighting" she was pretending she didnt want to go in, but smiling so i could tell she was just being silly. so i held her by her arms and plopped her into the water ( after her legs were allthe way in i let go of her arms)

well her vest didnt hold her up...she went 1/2 way down and then stayed there... she doesn't know how to swim at all so I had to lay down and pull her out ( my yDD was in my other arm. that was scary...I put her in there and she just sank.

of course everyone was looking at me like i just drowned my kid...

and when she stopped choking she said " mommy why'd you do that... you said i could swim"

dont beat yourself up over it. you live and learn. luckily everybody is ok now

[BeccaD777]

Praise the Lord that she is OK! That is a scary thing!

[BootyGold]

*sigh* I hear ya mama. Same thing happened to me at my own house just the other day. We had dinner outside, and all the kids went running into the pool after. My 3 yo DS can stand in the shallow end, but needs water wings.

He went right in and DH and I were standing on the other side of the fence. He went straight under and didn't come up! I just about had a heart attack because I was so far away. DH ran to go get him.

I was freaking out the rest of the day. He was totally fine, not even shaken up. I just about lost my mind Makes me want to cry just thinking about it now!

[keen1981]

No mama is perfect. NONE of us. I am a car seat nut but yes, once when we were new parents DS traveled a block not strapped in. His car seat was on its base, but DH and I thought the other had done the straps. perhaps this was meant to happen so that you can have a passion for water safety going forward, to save the life of your child or someone elses? Ever since my DS went unstrapped car seat safety has ALWAYS been a huge passion, but before i never thought twice. He was just a newborn.. An accident would have surely killed him.... But now, I am so passionate about car seats, I preach to anyone who will listen and have had 3 friends destroy their out of date seats! I consider each of their kids, a life saved


Take a deep breath mama, your accident was one of those lifes lessons we hate to go thru but come out, in the end, better for having gone through them. GL on the next trip to the pool!

[angelisagemini]

My heart is breaking for the mama guilt you must be feeling. Hopefully it's all feeling a bit better today.
I almost drowned when I was 10. I knew how to swim, but I had a waist flotation ring on and jumped in the pool and ended up flipping to where my head was under the water and my legs were floating. I got out of the ring, but was so confused where the top was and panicked. A teen girl there saved me...but I don't think I've ever seen my mom so scared.

Good for you for being proactive and starting the swim lessons now!

[Apathy]

No mama with more than one child can expect (or be expected) to provide the one-to-one supervision that a mama with one child can. And even mamas with one child mess up and take their eyes off their kids sometimes.
Yes, something horrible could have happened but it *didn't*.
Buy the mama that jumped in some flowers or a new outfit, thank her profusely, sign the kids up for swimming lessons like you plan to, and try to forgive yourself.

[HeatherlovesCDs]

Originally Posted by aecryan See, that is just it. I have taught them water safety. They know not to get in without my permission and certainly not without their safety devices. I am telling you, this all happened in a matter of 10 seconds. In the future, I am not taking all 3 of them to a pool by myself anymore... even when they can swim. Too much going on to keep track of them all the time.

I had something happen last summer that scared me to death and I won't take mine by myself anymore. Last summer, I had 3. My oldest was 3.5 and the twins were 1.5. We went to a friends pool in her backyard. I had them all in floaty rafts. I was keeping all the rafts close to me. But, then one of them wanted to play on the steps. I let him out and was watching/holding him. I got totally distracted. I suddenly realized I had let my DD (1.5 years old) float away in her raft. I had no idea where she was or how long she had been out of my reach. I freaked out. I had a vision of her on the bottom of the pool. It was a small pool, but I couldn't find her for a minute. Her raft had floated over to the other side of the pool and mixed in among a few other empty rafts. There were other mothers with kids there too. I was so scared and so embarrassed too. The guilt was overwhelming and I couldn't stop thinking about it for days. I haven't gone without another adult specifically to help me since. It's just not worth it. Now, I have 5 kids 4 and under since I had another set of twins 9wks ago. My kids love the pool, but it just won't be happening very often.

[iheartinky]

I sent my daughter down a water slide at a local waterpark when she was five, thinking she would be fine, since she knew how to swim. I planned to go down right after her. I watched from the top of the slide as she came off the slide and got stuck in the current at the bottom. She was not coming back up. The lifeguard wasn't paying any attention and I didn't have enough time to get her no matter which way I went. I was screaming like crazy for someone to help and rushed down the slide to her. Luckily, a nice man noticed her and got her to safety. I think about that moment every single time I go to a pool. It still makes me sick. My daughter remembers that day as "the day I almost died". Poor girl. We all make mistakes. We just try to learn from them and do the best we can.