The Night of the One Armed Sock Monkey

I really should have known something bad was going to happen . The end of the week was going WAY too smoothly - i actually finished all of the laundry this week ( a feat comparable to running a 10K for me ) and we got a sitter for a Friday night and Colin stopped teething long enough to afford us a full night's sleep for two days in a row.
Then i noticed it.
The dismembered arm of Lula's sock monkey lying on the cold tile floor in the kitchen.
It was a bad omen.
I casually picked it up , the stuffing bleeding out of it's unsewn socket ,making a mental note to add it to the pile of "things that need to be sewn, mended , fixed, etc. and then went on about my business. Where the rest of the sock monkey was , i didn't know.
As i went on with my 'peaceful weekend' i started to clean the kitchen , unload the dishwasher , and make coffee , i mused to myself how i was really getting the hang of this mothering thing - my baby was healthy and happy and virtually trouble-free , all due in no small part to my innate and extraordinary ability to be attentive, loving and on the ball at all times when it concerned my wee one.
Ha , so you are feeling just the bit smug , are you ?
Well , that was all about to change.
I was about to get slapped upside my head...

Colin woke up a tad too early Yesterday , and as he still sleeps with us in our bed, this can be a pain when you NEED your sleep and don't want to get up at 5:00 am on a weekend morning. So , i got up, changed his diaper and put him the papasan cradle swing ,where he has happily slept when not in our bed since he was born. Yeah , i know , but we tried THE CRIB and it didn't work for us.
Getting up and down a flight of stairs several times during the night to nurse a baby that wakes up crying and then staying up another hour to get him back to sleep , is not my idea of fun. I have come to the belief that whatever works best for you and the baby is the RIGHT thing to do.
Well , it all worked just fine for us until yesterday.

Colin fell out of the swing onto the ceramic tile floor in the sun room.
He was strapped in , like aways , but apparently is now too big and too strong to be left unattended in his swing. The ironic thing is i just weighed him and when the scale registered 22.5 lbs i said to myself "wow". Of course , NOW i remember that 22 lbs is the cut-off weight for the swing. Damn hindsight and addled post-partum brain syndrome.
The good news is that i had a heavyweight blanket covering Colin and this and his wubba-nub frog ( a pacifier with a stuffed froggie attached) went over the side with him and broke the fall. He also fell on his arm onto his side, so only his little apple cheek hit the bar and made a little bruise.
THANK GOD , he is ok. I had nightmare visions of a cracked skull and , i can't even bear to think any further than that.
I know babies fall and accidents happen but this truly made me heartsick. We couldn't figure out how the buckle came apart - we tried it over and over and it didn't give- so it makes no sense. I KNOW i snapped both sides but there is a nagging doubt that maybe i did something wrong - i didn't secure him properly and this makes me feel inadequate to the nth degree .

It isn't the first time something like this happened.
I left him on the changing table once ( for literally a second while i reached for a stack of diapers in a cabinet below) when he was only 4 months old and he wiggled and flipped himself over the table edge like a Chinese acrobat, landing on his cheek on the hardwood floor and vent cover.
Miraculously, he survived that virtually unscathed too - my Pediatrician answering my panicked phone call while i sobbed and rushed him to the emergency room - only to be told to turn around and bring him home that he was fine and that babies are tougher than they seem.
It seems on two separate occasions i have missed his huge developmental leaps into the next stage of physical prowess and caused him to be in pain. And it really feels bad.There is a type of guilt that no one talks about surrounding these inevitable accidents with your own flesh and blood , the kind that makes you feel ashamed and at a loss to explain why it happened. I just sat with Colin for hours afterward , holding him and nursing him until he fell asleep . My husband , who bounded out of bed like a pole vaulter when we heard the baby cry out , was as relieved as i was but remained speechless for several hours . I think both of us , all of us, were in a state of shock.

I am transitioning Colin to the crib this week. No more swing. He will stay in the bed with us a bit longer until nursing slows down but he can handle some naps in the crib.
The question is , can I ?