Hashem Yishmor 😱😱😰😰😰

amother

Azure

Mon, May 06 2019, 7:10 pm

I can’t imagine living with that level of guilt. And for the other spouse to forgive... Hashem...

I used to agree with Honeydew, but like everyone is saying, no one usually forgets if it’s routine. I remember after my first baby, I wasn’t yet used to having a baby and one afternoon my baby was napping and I was cooking dinner like usual. I needed to go borrow something from a neighbor and I was at her door knocking when it hit me that I had a few week old baby alone in the apartment with a pot on the stove!!!!

I ran back and was so so so beyond horrified at myself. But cooking dinner was such a routine and the baby had been napping and I wasn’t used to worrying about a baby and I just forgot.

TMI

↑ Pamela

Mon, May 06 2019, 7:20 pm

We are not here to judge. It is a tragedy beyond our understanding. No healthy parent dreams that it can happen to them. We cannot g-d forbid point fingered since non of us are perfect. We can try our best that it should never ever g-d forbid happen again and we should do our utmost to make sure that it doesn’t. But it isn’t our place to play g-d

amother

Amethyst ↓

Mon, May 06 2019, 7:40 pm

It happened to a friend of mine too. a staunch safety activist and very loud vocally about how one must always be so careful- someone asked her to drive their toddler to daycare that day as a favor since it was on her way to her own kids school. The toddler was strapped in and she drove right past the daycare onto her own kids school, stopped the car all her kids who are older hopped out (she didnt even look back because she is used to her older kids getting out by themselves ) then she drove to work parked got out.. Thank god the daycare called the mother and said just checking in is everything ok cuz baby didnt come today. Mother was horrified called the friend she asked for the favor who almost threw up when she realized that SHE - the staunch safety activist forgot a child in a car. It can happen to anyone.

Tzutzie

Mon, May 06 2019, 7:41 pm

Oy!!!! Bde.
Unfortunately this can happen to anyone.
There are quite a few studies how this happens.

This is one of my worst nightmares.
Hashem should give them the strength they need to get thru this.

amother

Gray

Mon, May 06 2019, 7:59 pm

My husband once left our 18 month old home alone. I was out volunteering somewhere and had the baby. He was home with our toddler and preschooler. The rest of the kids were at school. He needed to do an errand with a friend of his. Grabbed the preschooler and forgot the toddler at home. He was in the store with his friend and our daughter, when all of a sudden the preschooler began asking for her sister. Then it hit him that he left her sleeping in the crib at home, a 20 minute ride away. He left his friend and our daughter at the store and raced home. Thank God she was OK, and that I didn't hear about it until after the fact. This was almost 10 years ago.

Unfortunately things happen.

I am so saddened for this family. I wish them a sincere nechama.

amother

Mauve

Mon, May 06 2019, 8:12 pm

horrifying story. poor poor parents. May Hashem give them the strength they need to handle this.

is there a certain age when one can stop worrying about this?

recently heard such a story that bH ended totally fine but the baby was very very young so I was thinking my 20 month old is loud and usually makes noise in the car and is in a forward facing car seat so it shouldn't be a problem for me. how wrong I've been. Pale

amother

Coffee

Mon, May 06 2019, 8:13 pm

Remember also, even with all safety measures in your regular schedule, this usually happens when the schedule changes. So even if you have the daycare calling if your child doesn’t show up, it can happen while doing an errand that’s not part of the daily schedule.
It happened to me, And I’m seriously neurotic about safety.
I was doing an errand with my husband right after I had a newborn, we were not used to taking a baby with us anywhere.
B”h we were barely in the store when we remembered, but I learned how easily it can happen.
The advice about leaving a shoe in the backseat is spot on.

amother

↑ Amethyst

Mon, May 06 2019, 8:22 pm

amother [ Mauve ] wrote:

horrifying story. poor poor parents. May Hashem give them the strength they need to handle this.

is there a certain age when one can stop worrying about this?
Pale

when your youngest child can unbuckle themselves and open the car door themselves if you forgot them in there.

gamanit

Mon, May 06 2019, 11:58 pm

I was always afraid of this happening to me so I started taking precautions. I take off either both of my shoes or at minimum my left shoe and put it next to the car seat if I'm driving kids. This way I'll notice within a few steps at most that I'm barefoot and go back for my shoes. A woman on facebook who started doing this in response to another incident said that this saved her baby's life. She was having a stressful day and found herself halfways across the parking lot when she stepped into a puddle and realized that she was barefoot. She went back to her car and her baby was asleep in the back row. This was on a hot summer day.

heidi

Tue, May 07 2019, 12:53 am

amother [ Amethyst ] wrote:

when your youngest child can unbuckle themselves and open the car door themselves if you forgot them in there.

My 8 year old asked me to drive him to the bus stop that he usually walked to.
I dropped the toddler at gan and then started automatically driving toward work.
The 8 year old piped up from the back seat and I realized I had driven right past his bus stop, I was so used to going into "work mode" as soon as the youngest was dropped off.
That's when I truly understood that it could happen even to helicopter mothers like me.

mfb ↓

Tue, May 07 2019, 1:03 am

amother [ Amethyst ] wrote:

when your youngest child can unbuckle themselves and open the car door themselves if you forgot them in there.

But then if you do a favor and take a grandchild somewhere please take these same precautions

↑ mfb ↓

Tue, May 07 2019, 1:09 am

amother [ Turquoise ] wrote:

I wonder if it would even help. If a person hears it every time they are in the car without their kids. They won't even hear it anymore even if the kid is there.
Brains.. so fickle. Useless when we need it most, on overdrive when we want it to take a break.

My dh read somewhere about a device that alerts your phone if it moves to far away and you clip that onto the car seat

Raisin

Tue, May 07 2019, 7:19 am

so scary. This happened to me (once on my own, once with my husband) but we remembered after a few minutes.

Once I locked my kid in the car by accident with the keys inside and we had to wait for a service to come and open the door. BH it wasn't a hot day or we would have had to smash the window.

Waze now reminds you to take your kid out of the car when you get to your destination which is great.

↑ Ema of 5 ↓

Tue, May 07 2019, 7:32 am

I have a 9 year old daughter who usually gets to and from school by bus. One day, there was no bus, so I drove carpool home. A friend of mine, who lives in a different area than we do, asked me to take her daughter home also, and since I had extra room, I said no problem. I picked all the girls up and proceeded to drop e everyone off. I pulled into my driveway and looked into the rear view mirror while asking my daughter a question. Imagine my surprise, when I saw my friends daughter!!! I guess, since it wasn’t a usual carpool, the girls didn’t realize that she should have been dropped off first, and she was too shy to say anything.
IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE, AT ANY TIME

FranticFrummie

Tue, May 07 2019, 7:39 am

I would never depend on technology to keep a child safe. It's a good backup system, but a shoe in the back seat never fails.

Things that can make a parent go off schedule:

Bottle feeding instead of needing to nurse around the clock.
Colic or reflux, so you are up all night long.
A growth spurt that changes the child's sleeping pattern.
Any change in normal routines.
Distraction from older children in the car.
Baby being a sound sleeper, when you depend on the babbling to remind you.

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just pointing out how any of a million situations could CVS lead to tragedy. I can remember the name of my mom's first dog, but I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. Human short term memory is really unreliable.

Iymnok ↓

Tue, May 07 2019, 7:46 am

Wet st got a new car. Whenever it’s put in park there is a recorded announcement not to forget children in the car.

↑ mfb

Tue, May 07 2019, 7:49 am

What would be nice would be something in the car that can sense high body heat and distress and that should cause the alarm to ring and the windows to open automatically. I’m sure with the tech tee have today there is some way to do that.

↑ Ema of 5 ↓

Tue, May 07 2019, 8:20 am

Iymnok wrote:

Wet st got a new car. Whenever it’s put in park there is a recorded announcement not to forget children in the car.

What car? Did you have to set it, or is it preset?
I’m thinking though, that after a while you will become used to it.