Nightmare Come True

I have a lot of crazy dreams during pregnancy and one night I had this horrific nightmare that woke me from my sleep. It was that Z had fallen down a long flight of stairs and was severely injured. I tried calling 911, but I kept hitting the wrong numbers, and then I woke up terrified and breathing heavily. I shared this dream with a few people because it had impacted me so much.

Later that week, Z was playing outside and I was hanging stuff to dry on the clothes line. We have a big back yard and it is kind of broken up into sections so you can't see everything at once. I check on Z periodically, but since we have a fence I don't follow every little step he takes. At one point I notice he is out of my sight so I check around the corner and I still can't find him, in fact I don't see him anywhere in the back yard. No big deal, I must have left the back door cracked and he went inside. So I go inside and calmly call for him. Still no Z anywhere. That is when I start to panic, yet trying to convince myself to stay calm. I go check through the yard again with my heart starting to pound a little more with each passing moment. In my mind I am thinking he has to be here somewhere there is no way he can get out. I check the house one more time frantically screaming his name. That's when I realized that he is gone!

So I go to the gate that is in our drive way which was shut, but not latched properly (we had a meter man come by the day before and it was closed with a bungee cord, but not tight enough). That is when my adrenaline kicked into overdrive and I am running through the neighborhood banging on doors, hoping someone can help me find my little boy, but NO ONE IS HOME! So I called 911. I explain what is going on and they told me to wait outside of my house and they would send help. As I am standing there crying hysterically and pleading to God to help me I see cars parked in a nearby drive way. I know the 911 dispatcher told me to wait, but I COULDN'T JUST STAND THERE WHILE MY SON WAS MISSING! I have to take action, so I cross the street and then I think I hear Z's voice. It's very faint because there is an extremely loud football game taking place at the end of the street, but I follow my gut and continue shouting Z's name and crying out for help. Then two yards down I see him in the distance and I can't move fast enough. There is my little 2 year old in a tree house just sitting in the doorway happily with his feet dangling off the edge. The tree house wasn't very high up, I could get him down without climbing the ladder, but still I thought my heart would just stop right then. It had done too much pounding over the past 15 minutes. I embraced my child and cried and cried some more while he just smiled and said "MAMA!" Then I called 911 so they could cancel the emergency.

I was still shaken up for a few days. Of course I felt like a horrible mother for loosing my child, but I have heard many many stories since then to reassure me that these kind of accidents can happen. At least I didn't end up having a heart attack in the midst of it like I thought I was going to and hopefully still have a few years left before all of my hair turns grey from the stress of motherhood. All I can say is thank you Jesus for protecting my son.