Paige Ferguson is warning parents to watch their children carefully after her son suffered brain damage when he fell from a bed.
In a video posted to Facebook, the American woman said that on Mar. 17, she was visiting a friend’s house when her seven-month-old son, Colton, fell asleep. She didn’t have a crib with her, so she put him on the bed in her friend’s spare bedroom and went into the next room.
Soon after, “I heard a really loud thud and immediately I heard him cry and knew exactly what it was.”
She and her partner “dropped everything” and ran into the next room. “I felt so relieved because he was crying and he was alert still,” she said. The family decided to leave, and the baby eventually stopped crying.
“He even smiled at us. So we were like, ‘He seems ok, he seems alert and everything.’”
To be safe though, she decided to go to the hospital anyway. Once there, Colton began projectile vomiting. A CT scan revealed that he had fractured his skull and was bleeding inside his skull.
“I will never say that I was strong in that moment because I completely lost it,” she said. “I was just crying and crying.”
During an emergency surgery, Colton went into cardiac arrest. Seeing her son in the intensive care unit after, “It was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen in my entire life,” Ferguson said.
One doctor told her, “‘Ma’am, I need you to understand that your son is most likely going to die from this,” she said.
A few days later though, Colton woke up. Now he’s back at home, though still suffers from severe epilepsy and seizures. He may also have cerebral palsy, she said.
Ferguson said that she realized that sharing her story with the news media would result in a lot of backlash and people accusing her of being a bad mother.
“There is nothing that anybody can say to me or do to me that would make feel any worse than I already do.”
But she hopes that her story can help others.
“If I can just save one kid’s life, that’s all that matters to me.”
Colton fell from a low bed – just two feet, four inches high – she said. “A lot of parents lay their kids on a bed when they’re asleep. It happens. It just happened that it wasn’t so simple for Colton like it is for other people.”
The Canadian Paediatric Society warns parents that babies can squirm and move along a surface long before they can turn over by themselves. “Even a newborn can wriggle enough to fall off the change table, bed or sofa,” according to their website.
They recommend never leaving your baby unattended, especially when they’re on a raised surface like a bed, change table or sofa — to the point of not even leaving him or her unattended for a moment, like to answer the phone.
“The best way to prevent injury is to watch, listen and stay nearby. When you have to move away from your baby, put him in a safe place, like his crib.”
The Canadian Paediatric Society offers a full list of injury prevention tips on their website.