I feel absolutely terrible

I have had a thumping headache all day long. It feels a little bit like the flu, but only from the neck up. I don't have any muscle pains or a fever or anything like that, just the blinding headache and my sinuses are killing me.

But that isn't why I feel awful.

I mentioned a while back that I was trying to encourage Chloe to play by herself a bit more and to try and be a little more independent in her play rather than her developing a need for me to lead the way for her. It's been going brilliantly and she savours the hour or two (even more, sometimes I can't get her to come spend time with me) playing in her room, or in the garden. We painted some big letters and numbers on the walls in her room (we'll be redecorating her room soon so I wasn't bothered about painting on the walls) and she enjoys spending a bit of time copying them onto her blackboard.

Today she was playing happily in her room and I was doing a few bits and pieces downstairs when I heard an almighty crash. I think I managed to get from the kitchen, up the stairs to into her bedroom in about four strides, it was that loud.

I opened her bedroom door to be met with the sight of the chest of drawers in her bedroom toppled forward, and kind of resting on the bottom drawer so it hadn't actually fallen the whole way over. All three drawers were fully out and clothes were all were over the floor. Chloe was pressed against the farthest wall in her room with both hands clamped over the crown of her head and she was in complete hysterics. Do you that really deep almost painful sounding crying a child does when they're really hurt.

I panicked, assuming the worst and that the chest had fallen over and cracked her on the head and that she might be bleeding or worse.

I sat down with her and checked her over, trying to calm her down. After I'd established that she wasn't bleeding or cut in any way and I'd managed to calm her to some extent I checked her head properly and there didn't even appear to be any bumps or signs that the chest had hit her.

I'm assuming that she felt the chest move above her and managed to get far enough out of the way as it fell, that either it didn't hit her but she felt the top drawer come to rest above her head or it grazed her. Either way it obviously scared the wits out of her.

I felt really sick at the time. Does that happen to anyone else, when your child cries like that, you feel really nauseous?

Anyway, that isn't the reason I feel terrible.

Once she'd calmed down a little more I asked her what had happened and she told me that she had opened the three drawers looking for something and the chest just fell over on top of her.

A little bit of background, the chest of drawers in Chloe's room is a solid piece of furniture. When it came time that I knew she needed one for her room, I bought the heaviest most solid one I could find rather than a flatpack version because I knew chances were at some stage she may try to climb it. All the weight in this thing is in the chest itself and not in the drawers and I've had all three of the drawers open many times and there has never been any risk of it falling over, its just too heavy.

I feel absolutely terrible today because the next thing I said to her was "are you sure that's what happened?" and every child knows that is mummy code for "are you lying to me?"

She burst into tears again and remained adamant that she had pulled the drawers out and it just fell over, but still I wasn't entirely convinced. I still thought that she had pulled the drawers out and then tried to climb up them or pulled really hard on them or something to make it over balance.

I finally half heartedly accepted her version of events and set about getting the chest of drawers back up off the floor and all the clothes put away.

I lifted the thing back up again and folded all the clothes back into the right drawers. The drawers were still open as sitting on the floor I folded a little blanket she still has, placed it in the bottom drawer and still in the same position pushed the bottom drawer closed.

And I felt the whole thing move....

But I'm not as fast as Chloe....

And I caught that top drawer square on the head.

Needless to say the damn chest is now fixed to the joist in the wall with two 'L' brackets so it isn't going anywhere again.

So now I feel absolutely terrible, which I completely deserve.

And no amount of painkillers will shift this headache. And I deserve that too!