After putting her son down for a nap in his crib, a mother-of-three was looking forward to all she could accomplish during that coveted hour. However, something inside her said she needed to return to the nursery instead of getting in the shower. That’s when she opened his bedroom door in complete horror.
Alison Johnson is busy after recently giving birth to her third child, while her twins were still in the early toddler years. Like most parents, she uses her children’s nap time for a moment of peace and relaxation. However, on Monday, instead of closing her twins’ bedroom door and not returning until their nap was over, she felt that she needed to look in on them five minutes after putting the two down for a nap in their side-by-side cribs.
Shortly after putting her boy and girl twins in their beds, her son Caleb began to cry. While it’s not out of the ordinary for him to make a fuss before falling asleep, she got the sense it was different on this day. Alison explained in a social media post to warn other parents about a hidden danger in many homes,. Caleb and his sister Libby’s cribs were set up right next to each other against the wall, with a very little gab between them, where Caleb had climbed out and gotten stuck. He was dangling by the neck in that spot when Alison found him.
“His body fit through, but his head wouldn’t. He was using every ounce of energy he had to hold himself up by his little arms,” Alison wrote of the scary sight. “If they had given out, he would’ve just been hanging there by his head.”
She immediately rescued him from what would have been his fatal demise had she not come into the room right when she did, but the situation was terrifying by just how close he came. Had she not followed her instincts, she likely would have lost her son. Her post was to warn other parents who have tandem cribs set up this way, that it’s not safe. Many families with twins or kids close in age, place their cribs like this without seeing the danger in doing so, just like Alison.
“What’s even more scary is that like many moms, I generally use nap time as an opportunity to shower. Had I done that today and checked on him after five minutes, he would have literally hung himself,” Alison warned in her post. “When baby proofing, I never in a million years would have seen this as a potential danger.”
Her horrifying reality check is also a testament to listening to your instincts as a parent. You’re given that gut feeling for a reason, and in this case, it saved her son’s life. Had she second-guessed it, she would have had to live with knowing that she could have saved her son, but didn’t.
