Hello,
My name is Chris and I currently reside in Virginia. I am here to tell everyone about something that recently happened to my girlfriend and I's baby Thursday morning and where we stand right now. I am looking for any advice anyone can give us on what to do.
Thursday morning, my girlfriend woke me up between the hour of 4:30 - 5:00. She had said to me "Chris, I'm stuck" I went to turn on the light to see what she was stuck to. Upon doing so I go over and discover that our baby appears to be tangled up in her hair.
Initially I thought he was simply tangled. As I started to try and remove the hair from around him I notice her hair is knotted around his neck. As I was doing this the baby started waking up and I guess felt trapped by her hair so of course he started getting upset. As I am starting to get really nervous about the situation I am trying my best to remove her hair from around him and I feel like I am only making it worse.
The baby is fighting and turning red at this point so I knew I had to act very quickly. I ran to the kitchen to try and find scissors and cannot immediately find them so I grabbed the next thing in mind a small knife. I run back to the room and in spite of the fact that our baby was struggling to become free manage to get this knife underneath most of the hair that is choking him.
As I started to try and cut our baby started to turn purple and seemed to be dying or fainting. At this point is where I lost it. I started screaming his name and put so much force into cutting the hair from his neck that it cut through. I picked him up. I can only remember little after he was released but I will never forget the feeling I had as his eyes stopped moving and he was becoming purple. I remember trying to breath into his mouth and suck in.
I had gone so crazy at that point that I was trying anything. I didn't see it helping him so I handed him to her and ran to call 911. As I was leaving the room my girlfriend called to me "Chris, Chris, He's breathing" She was so entirely gone at that point. It was the most upset I had seen her in the 4 years we've been together and rightfully so. I sat next to her and we were holding him and looking at him to make sure he was ok.
He was colder than usual and so weak he could barely move his own arms or legs. After a few minutes have passed we try to do the things we usually do with him to make him smile and we get smiles from him so we are so relieved at this point.
After sobbing and being in complete shock of what had happened we decided that even though he seemed ok we needed to take him to the Hospital to make sure he was ok. Never once were we thinking how far fetched our story would look. We agree to take him to St Francis where he was delivered. Our insurance did not cover us at the local hospital. But our thinking wasn't of money anyway. We would have obviously called 911 had he not of revived but we believed him to be okay.
We got him some bottles together and got the directions to the Hospital from my girlfriends sister. We drive there and they check our baby out and do X-rays and concluded that he was fine. But the Doctor said that because of the nature of the injury he had to call our local police and child protective services. Which we were understanding of. We feeling we did the right thing did not think we were going to seem to come under the gun as being directly responsible for this.
We have not had any charges filed against us yet. We are so scared about what is going to happen from all of this. After I cut the hair from my girlfriends head we saved it. Our initial thinking wasn't to save it as any sort of evidence. My actual thinking was we were going to save it to never forget what had happened. My girlfriends sister babysits our children so she was there in the house with us, she brought us the bag to put the hair into.
Our baby was taken from us and placed into the care of my parents. Which is good. We are thankful to God or whoever woke my girlfriend up so that she could get my attention and that I was able to save him. We don't know what we'd do if he had not of survived this. We have done interviews with the Detective and they appear to be nice enough about all of this and doing their job. But, we refuse to lose our baby.
We do not know how to prove our innocence. We would have so many character witnesses who could attest to us as being great parents. What with the great grades our children get. The fact that they always get their well check-ups. We are really lost in all of this so we have started taking notes of what we do everyday.
We had to submit to drug screenings as part of the investigation which we of course are going to pass. We have not contacted any legal counsel yet because we have not had any charges filed against us. As I understand it, it is not illegal to sleep with your child. We don't know what they are going to do. They both said they had never heard of anything like this happening. So that obviously worries us both.
We had to take him to the pediatrics office today for a check-up as ordered by the social worker. The doctor knows us well because we always take our other son for allergy shots there. She had looked at the markings around his neck and commented on how you could see the ligature mark but as well a bruise above that. As if part of the hair was tightened in one air and the other part bruised his neck. She took pictures of this with her camera phone.
We have also taken pictures of him with our own camera. We are trying to prepare ourselves for what may come of all of this should we go to court over this. Strangely enough they never requested the knife that I cut her hair with. I don't get that part.
I am just wanting to pass this along to other parents to risk you take when you sleep with your baby. We NEVER thought something like this would happen. Plenty of people do it. We did it and it was fine. But, what happened to us could happen to anyone else. So I hope you all take heed to our story.
Thank you,
Chris

