'I heard the thud and ran...it wasn't a Good Friday, it was a Bad Friday'

I heard the thud and ran...and when I went into the room and saw what greeted me; I turned white as a ghost.

Good Friday last week was one of those days I’m quickly trying to forget.

If you’re sick of hearing about my son, Jack, or my home life, then turn on over to page fourteen now. If you’re still here, wait until I tell ya what happened...

So, we just found out a few weeks ago that Jack’s creche was closing from Thursday, April 14 until Monday, April 25. It is our first Easter with Jacko in a creche, but apparently it happens every year, and as we are new to this creche thing, it caught us by surprise.

So, we had to come up with a childminding plan.

I took the first day, which happened to be Good Friday and would stay on my phone for any urgent work emails and would work early in the morning before my wife started at 9am and would work in the evening after Jack went down at 7pm.

I actually wrote this column that Friday evening. One of the many things I did that was work-related.

And after I finished work, well, there was a bottle of wine involved. Anyway, back to Good Friday morning. I took Jacko from 9am as planned and got him out of his pyjamas and dressed for the day.

It didn’t start well as I quickly found out my wife had left him in a whopper of a dirty nappy for me, so the sweat started pouring out of me early on.

After that, I took a few work calls, and sent a few messages. At 1pm we went out for our father and son lunch together and we came back about an hour later for his afternoon nap.

We were doing a bit of messing beforehand.

He was sitting on his new tractor and I was pushing him around the house filling up the loader with books etc. and dropping them in another part of the house which he thought was hilarious.

Anyway, he was really tired and needed his nap so I quickly changed him into a pyjamas and put him in his sleeping bag, sang him a verse of the Rose of Allendale, and put him into his cot.

In hindsight, I maybe put him down a little wired from all the tractor excitement.

I then left the room and took his tractor from the kitchen back up to the hall. Half way up I heard Jack crying and thought he must be crying lying down.

Then I was walking back to turn on his AngelCare video console to see what he was doing and I heard the soother hitting the floor.

Then I thought, oh, he must be standing up. And then seconds later, I heard the loudest, most sickening thud I’ve ever heard before and the child started roaring even louder.

I sprinted into the room to find Jack out of the cot, flat on his back, looking up at the ceiling and bawling crying. He had obviously begun to climb out of the cot and subsequently FELL out of the cot.

How he landed, I will never be able to find out. But he had an imprint of the carpet on his hairline and carpet burn on his forehead.

And did he roar.

I turned white as a ghost fearing he had a concussion or worse. I was worried he had gone over on his neck but the way he was cut up and grazed, it seems like he came out sideways.

I was close to puking and worried that Jack might puke too. It was only his second time getting out of the cot. The first time he wasn’t in a sleeping bag and landed on the bed side.

This time he was in a sleeping bag and landed on the floor side.

We are now in new territory. He didn’t puke, thankfully, and neither did I.

He settled down and I checked him over and watched him closely for a half hour and put frozen peas on where he was marked.

He eventually went down for a nap and ate a powerful dinner that evening, ate a cone, walked by the river that evening and threw stones in.

He was the finest.

But it was hardly a Good Friday, it was a Bad Friday and one I’d like to forget. Parenting is hard.

You couldn’t be up to them...