Child Safety Week

This photo is difficult for me to look at. It triggers an emotional response, a memory that is so painful. It is a point in time when I catastrophically failed as a first time parent.

My daughter, Lily, was a toddler at the time and we travelled to Latvia to visit family and friends. During our trip, my best friend invited us to stay with her for a few days, so I packed a few basics and we enjoyed the level of hospitality and attention that only friends who see you once in a blue moon can bestow.

At the time, I was having persistent difficulty sleeping. Looking back, I think the conflict between becoming a mum and recent promotion to a fast-evolving autonomous job role with it's concomitant stresses and responsibilities, possibly made me teeter on the edge of depression. But I definitely didn't recognise it at the time. All I knew was that I simply couldn't get to sleep, night in, night out - couldn't sleep.?

I shared my predicament with my godmother, who suggested I try taking some of her sleeping tablets to see if it helps. So it was this 14-tablet blister pack of 10mg Temazepam that I packed with me to stay a night away from home.

It was an ordinary evening. I bathed Lily, got her dressed into pyjamas, and put her into a large double bed that me and her were going to share that night. We read a bedtime story together, she snuggled up with her cuddly toy and we said goodnight, as I went to have a shower.?

I have to pause here, because the tears are burning in my eyes and my heart is ripping from inside of my chest as I recall what I was faced with once I came back into our bedroom.?

Lily clearly wasn't sleeping. Instead, I saw a shape of my child, sat upright underneath the duvet, with the sounds of cracking foil coming from the moving human mound. I instantly remembered - Temazepam, bedside cabinet! Oh, God! I raced across to the bed, ripping off the duvet, to find my child holding the Temazepam blister pack... with 6 tablets missing.?

Oh, God, oh, God!

I grabbed Lily and (with what probably seemed like an out of character aggression) started interrogating her about the missing tablets. She realised she's done something wrong and clammed up. No comment for Mummy.?

"These are Mummy's medicine Lily! You mustn't touch this! Where are these tablets?" I pressed on, even though I knew the horrifying answer.?

I grabbed the petrified child under my arm and took her to the bathroom, sticking my fingers down her throat, trying to make her sick. It was impossible, it wasn't working and by this point - panic was mounting.?

A fleeting, desperate thought entered my brain - "maybe she'll be OK if she just sleeps it off?" And then the rational brain stepped in - "No, Krissie! It takes one of these tablets to get you to sleep. She's taken six!!!"

By this point my friend and her family were all roused by the commotion. My friend immediately called an ambulance. In short snappy sentences she explained that we have a 3 year old who has taken six 10mg Temazepam tablets.?

In Latvia, we have a paediatric specific ambulance crews, which bring along an emergency medicine paediatric doctor and a technician. I can't recall how long it was before the doctor arrived and in fact the rest of that evening are just horrific flashbacks to moments in time:

• me, Lily and the doctor crammed into a tiny bathroom space,
• me sat on a tiny stool holding my petrified child in my arms,
• Lily sat in my lap with her back against my belly,?
• both of us facing the bath,?
• my arms in a cross across her chest so that my hands were restraining her flailing arms and holding back her shoulders,
• the (what can only be described as a) hosepipe that was put down her throat, as she gagged, tried to scream, cried, gasping for breath in between the throws of vomiting spasms,
• the remnants of half masticated dinner, in chunks, inside the enamel bath,
• me desperately trying to see if I there was anything resembling tablets in the vomit,
• me holding the resigned, rhythmically pulsating body of my child, as she continued to throw up for what seemed like a lifetime, the whimpers fading as she tired.

Eventually, Lily passed out, exhausted.?

The doctor said we would need to be taken to the Children's Hospital. I don't remember the journey in the ambulance.?

This image is that of Lily, in our Children's Hospital in Riga, laying in a cot, with a drip in her arm. She is awake and alive.?

I was sitting at the bottom of the cot, watching my child, sleeping, shallow breathing, but alive.?

I remember watching the sun rise through the hospital window, as the enormity of what just happened and what could have been, washed over me.

I called her Dad in the UK and explained how I nearly killed our child. This was the hardest call to make and, I imagine,an impossible one to receive.To this day, he's not forgiven me for this.

I am full of shame, guilt and terror about my apparent stupidity. Lily was (and is) my everything, and on that night - I could have lost her. Because I left 14 sleeping tablets in a bedside cabinet right next to where I put my daughter to sleep. Saying it out loud only amplifies the ridiculousness of this decision.

I am sorry, if my story upsets you, but I also hope that it does. No doubt you will think badly of me, and you should - because there is no justification to not protecting those we love the most. I was irresponsible and thought-less, and my daughter very nearly paid the price. I was the adult, who was meant to protected her, and I failed.?

I learned, though.?

I hope that by sharing our story with you - so can you.

https://capt.org.uk/poisoning-prevention/

#ChildSafetyWeek #poisoning #SafetyMadeSimple Child Accident Prevention Trust (CAPT)