The E.B. Bain Water Treatment Plant in Raleigh, NC

Natalie, my soon to be 3-year-old, fell down about 13 stairs tonight. She seems to be okay. Actually, I think she walked away from it without a scratch. I know that kids are resilient, but I’m very surprised (and so relieved) that she’s not hurt.

I was downstairs and everyone else was upstairs. Natalie broke away from the herd to come downstairs, presumably to get her sippy cup full of water. It sounds like she made it successfully down no more than one or two stairs before she fell. All I heard was a series of thuds that just kept going. It was a sickening sound and I honestly can’t get it out of my head. There were no screams or anything like that, just thuds. I started running to the stairs as the sound stopped. There was silence for about a second, then terrible screaming. The kind of screaming that scares you to death as a parent. I expected to find Kate (my older girl) when I rounded the corner. I was shouting, "Kate, Kate" as I was running to the stairs. Kate has fallen down 2 or 3 stairs before, but certainly nothing like this, not from the top. When I saw Natalie’s little hair covered face on the ground, it felt even scarier.

She was crying, which was a good thing. That ruled out a couple of really bad things right away. I got her to hold pretty still and to quit crying enough to be able to talk to me. She said the only thing that hurt was her head, she pointed right to the top of it. She seemed to be limping a little at first, but after a couple of minutes, she was walking just fine.

Even though she seemed unhurt, because she said her head hurt we decided to take her to the pediatric ED to get her checked out. I knew they probably wouldn’t do any diagnostic tests, but it was okay, I felt better getting her seen anyway.