I must admit that there are only two reasons why I am sharing this experience on my blog, and they include:
A – My pediatrician, who I happen to (already) really like & respect, informed me that the best way to emotionally handle what happened was to drink a glass of wine … check … and to write it down to share with Waverly one day.
B – I have had two (uneventful) days since my “mistake.” And now that I realize that I can overcome what happened and more specifically, can successfully leave my house with my baby girl – I am more able to talk about it. So here goes …
My husband returned to work last week, and since being cleared to carry the car seat on my own, I have been slowly getting used to leaving the house with just Waverly and me. I had previously packed the diaper bag and fastened my baby girl into her car seat at the end of last week, but after realizing what a large task leaving the house had become, I picked up my mom to assist in the endeavor. But this past Monday, I was determined to take Waverly out on my own. All didn’t go as planned …
SIDE NOTE – Waverly does NOT like her beautiful hot pink & black floral print car seat, even though it is complete with a pink elephant toy hanging from the top. I am SURE that one day soon she will realize how lovely it is, but at this point, she cries rather loudly every time we set her in it.
So this past Monday, I walked out the front door with Waverly (crying) in her pink car seat, my Petunia Picklebottom diaper bag, and three bags with baby items to return that day. I secured the car seat in the back seat, like my husband taught me to, set the bags down, and APPARENTLY dropped my keys in the back because moments later I realized that I had locked my sweet girl in my steamy Mazda 3. Of course (as I would in a smoldering vehicle), she continued to scream louder & louder, and I followed suit. Thankfully, my husband was at his work with spare keys only 10 minutes away … but as you could imagine, those 10 minutes felt more like 10 hours. When we finally were able to rescue Waverly from the back seat and her mom’s stupidity, she was sweating and certainly upset. We rushed her to our pediatrician, and luckily, other than a fever that quickly subsided, our daughter was back to eating normally and acting herself.
I am thankful that (as scary as the experience was), it ended up rather uneventfully. But that didn’t change how bad I felt for making such a stupid move before she even turned three weeks old. The good news, however, is that I have learned my lesson and have left the house twice since, and both times have had a death grip on my keys before even thinking of closing the back seat that holds my baby girl. And just in case of emergency (because obviously we have them), we also have a hide-a-key under that white Mazda 3.