No, but once, when my daughter was a toddler, I fell asleep on the couch as she played beside me…with the front door standing wide open (the air conditioner was broken). She could have gone right out to the street. Fortunately, my grandma happened to stop by the house before anything tragic occurred.
I don’t have kids, but my father forgot me once when I was a baby. My mom had gone to the store with my older sister, and my dad realized that they hadn’t put bread on the list, so he got in the car to go tell her. When he found my mom at the store, she looked at him and said, “Where’s Shannon?” My dad went white and tore ass out of there. Luckily, I was just asleep in my crib.
He also once left me on the beach when I was two with my then five year old sister - she was supposed to watch me, but instead she followed my dad up to the hotel restaurant without him knowing. My mom was already there, and once again, she noticed my absence. In the mean time, I had wandered off to play in a hole in the sand. My mom came pretty close to killing my father that day.
What makes it really odd is that my dad is about the last guy you’d expect to forget something like that. He’s not absentminded at all.
Her thesis (she graduated not too long ago) was on forgiveness.
Hearing these stories – NOW I know why, when friends see me in public w/out the twins, they always ask me where they are. They’re concerned, my friends, perhaps wisely.
It’s a lot easier to feel anger when the mother is in a bar and left the baby in the car while she partied for hours. Or the woman who left her toddler son to die in the car as she spent the afternoon in the beauty salon being primped for her wedding that day.
StG
Another thing I saw is that the incidence of babies being forgotten in cars has skyrocketed since the introduction of air bags.
Because now they’re in the back seat.
One sweltering summer day I was at work when I read a news story about a baby being left to die in a hot car. Even though I had a perfectly clear memory of dropping my toddler off at daycare that morning, I was so upset that I got up and walked out to my car to make absolutely sure he wasn’t in there.
But other than tiny moments of panic, I haven’t forgotten them. My husband and I used to have a ritual phone conversation at the end of each day to make sure we knew which one of us was picking them up.
I love these threads. I get a lil’ thrill out of saying, “Yep. I can forget my baby. Hasn’t happened, but I can easily imagine it happening.” It thrills me to say things that I figure are true for everybody, including any cornballs that would insist otherwise.
I had forgotten about it earlier, but I was once forgotten. My parents were at the hospital with some relative, I forget who or what was going on. Childbirth? Dunno. They had been there all day and went home in the early morning hours. When they got there they realized they were short one passenger. Me.
They hurried back and found me soundly asleep on a waiting room couch where I had been for hours.
I ain’t no cornball.
The knowledge that we had our daughter out and about just made us preternaturally aware of where she was at all times. Parenting is, certainly for your first child, a constant state of worry, and it was never possible for us to get complacent about her. I could see me forgetting my house keys or car keys somewhere, but not my daughter.
When I was an infant, my parents decided to take a family picnic. They packed everything up, got halfway there, and realized they’d forgotten me. Thankfully, I was sleeping peacefully in my crib.
When my younger brother was about eight, he and my dad went sailing. It was an hour drive to the lake. Dad stopped to get gas and sodas, and my brother sat on the curb playing with his Hot Wheels. Dad didn’t know he’d gotten out and drove off without him. Figured it out pretty quickly though.
When we were old enough, we knew that if anything similar happened, we just had to let another grown up know, and it would be taken care of.
That poor, poor woman. Honestly, I think if I’d done something like that, I would strongly consider suicide.
Ah, yep. I’d be gone so fast they’d never have a chance to stop me.
K.
But they’ve got a three year old son to take care of, still. I think if the baby’d been an only child, I could understand the suicidal impulse, but how can she leave her 3 year old orphaned?
shudder OTOH, how can she look her 3 year old in the eye, knowing he’s going to grow up knowing Mama killed his baby sister?
Bad news all 'round. I can’t say what I’d do in such an instance, except beg the gods to let me lose my sanity so I could escape what I’d done somehow.
There’s the rub, she can’t escape “I was a horrible failure of a mother” by killing herself, running away or clocking out mentally without compounding it exponentially. I could not possibly feel sorrier for that poor woman. 
I never forgotton The Kiddo. Never forgotton he was in the car, or forgotton to pick him up.
She didn’t know he was in the vehicle, he’d snuck back in after being taken out. It’s not as though she sat in the air-conditioned salon, enjoying being primped knowing her son was in the hot vehicle dying. A friend who was supposed to watch all the kids that day didn’t watch him close enough.
From the link: “Investigators say the friend who was supposed to be watching Gregory noticed he was missing but did not call the mother to ask his whereabouts.” WTF? I would KILL my friend.
That’s the part that stood out to me. She realized he was missing and then ____?
StGermain, I thought you were talking about the lady who purposefully locked her toddler in a hot car for hours because he wouldn’t sit still in the salon.
Two days after my oldest was born, I walked to Woolworths with her in her stroller. I browsed around, sometimes parking the stroller and shopping a couple feet away. Then I thought of something I needed from another store and walked across the street, leaving the newborn in the stroller in Woolworths. I kept having uneasy feelings of “what have I forgotten.” I was back in Woolworths in a panic in less than 2 minutes, the stroller parked right where I left it, with the baby sleeping as only a newborn can sleep.
This story has become the stuff of family legend.
Yeah, well your mom may be mean, but at least she never abandonned you at Woolworths. (The detail of the store name is critical.)
Mom has to buy us ice cream, she’s still dealing with the guilt from leaving me at Woolworths when I was two days old. (The age of the baby is also critical).
Sure, Dad forgot to pick us up at karate, but he NEVER, EVER would have left us alone in New York at Woolworths. (Added detail of the state clearly defining the nature of the deed.)
So, yes, I can see how such things happen. Parents are not perfect and tragedies happen. There but for the grace of God and a lot of luck, go I.