Oof! If you’ve ever had an accident with one of your kids, prepare for flashbacks. I’ll tell you up front, the child in this story is reportedly home and doing well. Jenny Mollen is an actress and author of two books. She’s married to actor Jason Biggs and together they have two sons, Sid, five, and Lazlo, one. I don’t know much about her other than she tends to overshare information about her sex life. Her Instagram is pretty entertaining. Except for her post last Wednesday, which was a little scary. Jenny admitted that she’d dropped Sid and he hit his head hard enough to fracture his skull:
Her caption reads:
On Saturday evening, I dropped my son on his head causing him to fracture his skull and landing him in the ICU. I am forever grateful to Lenox hill downtown and @nyphospital for their immediate response and aid. Thank you to all of the nurses, neurologists, pediatricians, residents, cafeteria staff and brave women that keep the visitor‘s bathrooms clean. Not sure how this post turned into an Oscars acceptance speech… But @biggsjason Thank god for you! Thank god, thank god, thank god. It has been a traumatic week but Sid is home now taking things slowly and recovering nicely. He is also eating a lot of chocolate dipped ice cream cones and plans to try cherry dipped soon. My heart goes out to all parents who have or will ever find themselves in this kind of position. You are not alone…
This was gutsy. We all know that the Mom Shame Squad is happy to pounce on anyone for just about anything. Jenny herself ran afoul of them for a photo of her son wearing what they deemed was a too-full diaper. This kind of admission could very easily rally folks to chant “negligence.” But things like this happen. I didn’t drop mine, but I left him on a couch as a baby and got out of arm reach. He rolled off it onto a cement floor. There was no damage, didn’t have to go to a doctor. Yet, he’s 14 now and my heart tightened just writing that out. Jenny was smart to not tell how she dropped Sid, that’s probably how she diverted the ire. I’m not implying she did anything wrong, just that specifics could be used to condemn her. But I appreciate that Jenny discussed this because so many of us have similar stories. I think it helps parents know that these things do happen. The comments on her post, shockingly, actually reflect that. Many are just posting hearts and the sentiment “happens to us all.”
The important thing is that Sid is okay and recovering. Jenny will never forget this. She’ll think about it 20 years from now and cringe all over again. At least she knows someone else is doing the same thing. The kids, by contrast, won’t remember a thing about it but will use it to get a better birthday haul for decades to come.
Photo credit: WENN Photos and Instagram
Two incidents for me. Like you, my son rolled off the couch and onto a wood floor. Busted his nose. He was fine. Then when he was five he slipped out of my hands while getting out of the tub and split his lip. The blood! I felt like an unfit mother. We survived.
When my sister (8 yrs younger) was about 8 months old, my dad was changing her diaper, and he didn’t put the table strap around her, so as he reached for the diaper, you guessed it, she rolled off the changing table onto the linoleum floor. She did make a peep. You could hear my dad yell all through the house though! Lol.
I rushed in from my room. My sister, at this point, started to cry just from the looks on our faces and tone of voice. I held her while my dad called the paediatrician. He told us to keep her awake all night, and not let her sleep, and bring her in in the morning. When my mom came home, she went white, and then took charge lol. So, we walked around with her all night.
TLDR: she was fine. Had a goose egg on her forehead, but that’s it. We always teased her growing up that that fall shook things around, and made her smarter than she was intended to be, (she’s *really* is super smart!)
Accidents happen with kids.
Yep, it happens. One of my twins was laying in the middle of my king sized bed, and hadn’t learned to roll over yet. Until that moment. Of course the little bugger picked the exact time to learn to roll when I left the room for one minute to check on his brother! Thunk. Fortunately he wasn’t hurt.
Many years ago, I was a bad aunt. My brother’s five year old son was living with us and was sleeping in the bedroom with me and my sister (both teenagers). I had been displaced from my twin bed and my mother got a bunk bed where I slept on the bottom and five year old nephew was on the top. One night, I woke up to see that he had pushed the safety ladder off the bed and it had landed against my sister’s nearby bed. No one else woke up and I didn’t feel like getting out of my warm bed to put it back. Later – you guessed it – he rolled out of the top bunk and would have fallen to the ground except he became tangled in his blanket and miraculously stopped a foot from the floor. So my laziness could have led to him fracturing his skull. Bad auntie, bad, bad auntie.
Hope the child is fine but this woman bugs.
Truly! The “cute” story of hiring prostitutes for her husband, the constant naked Instagram pics to show how much weight she’s lost/gained/bored/brave/etc she is! Everything she does and says she wants to shock you and instead she just tires you. Thankfully her son is fine but I’m sure she come out with another shocking post soon enough
Yup!
Yeah she’s annoying AF and has a deep down thirst. Not surprised she’s trying to enhance her brand with her child’s head injury.
When I was about 3 I was walking on a wall holding my mums hand and I slipped. She did the natural thing and yanked me up and in the process dislocated my elbow. 32 years later and I still make her feel guilty!
My mom, a nurse, warned me about how easy it is to dislocate a child’s shoulders.
My husband was (gently) spinning our son around by his arms and the same happened. It was pretty scary. People always told us they are not as fragile as they seem and that goes and happens. He couldn’t have been more than 2-3 years old. We felt awful. I don’t think he’s ever spun either of our kids again. They are now almost 9 & 12.
That happened to me when I was 5 and we were visiting the UK. We were at a busy train station and my mother was holding on to my hand tight to not lose me in the crowd. I decided that I didn’t want to walk anymore and just sat down, promptly dislocating my shoulder. My poor mom.
This happened t when I was watching my niece and took her to a high school baseball game. She was 4 and her hands were gripping the chain-link fence before the game started with a bunch of other little kids. Just general kid stuff, just make noise, shake fence. She stopped kind of suddenly and complained about her elbow hurting. I figured she might have hit the humerus and we put some ice on it. She dozed off after a while and I took the ice off. I tried to pick her up when the game was over and she wouldn’t lift that arm. I contacted my sister, and she told me that she gets hurt a lot and doesn’t complain, so I needed to take her to the ER.
I took her to the local ER, and they basically said she was being dramatic and faking it. My sister got really upset about that and asked me to take her elsewhere I took her to a Children’s hospital and explained, they did a quick exam and then x-ray to confirm she’d dislocated both her elbow and her shoulder. They explained that their joints are so soft at that point, it’s like a Sharpie and a cap. It’s secure enough that it won’t come off on its own for the most part, but with a little force, it slides right out. They said “Would you put a Sharpie in an expensive bag, just because it had a cap?” It made me really think about how insecure those joints are. When I had my son, I tried to be extra vigilant about not putting stress on his joints.
Damn – dislocating your elbow is way more painful than a shoulder
It happened to my niece and her elbow is still not completely normal
What a terrifying thing to happen and so glad the child is ok.
Never happened to me but one incident that I laugh about now. My 7 year old and I went for a walk and on the way back were racing and teasing each other. I ran up and tagged her on her back and she was off balance and literally fell flat on her face. She got up with several minor lacerations and screamed “YOU RUINED ME!!!!!” She was hysterical. This on a busy highway full of witnesses.
Needless to say I don’t do that anymore with her 😕
If she’s still young, please consider taking her to a therapist who can help with her possible issue of thinking that if her face isn’t perfect, that she’s ruined. It sounds like she may care way too much about her appearance, and that can lead to disordered eating and other mental health issues.
I’m glad that she’s okay physically; it made me cringe that a 7 year old would associate some minor lacerations on her face as being “ruined.”
Jag I think you should maybe chill a little. Kids are dramatic as hell. Unless the child has ongoing comments and issues with her face this story is definitely not cause for any alarm.
CharliePenn, yes if that was her immediate reaction, before she could even see herself, it was clearly hyperbole. I just shared a story of similar drama with my son, who was fine again about 10 minutes after it happened.
Jag, save your cringes ffs. You must not have kids. They are bizarre and unpredictable creatures.
that’s a lot of projection from one sentence. children are melodramatic all the time. i hardly think that calls for therapy. maybe you should give some thought to why you would come to such a conclusion from a simple anecdote.
No worries Jag, even though she fell on her face it was her arms and legs that got cut. Much better than the black eye she sustained falling on the steps at age 3.
The “you ruined me” thing made me laugh and reminded me of a dramatic indecent with my son at about that age. We were playing hide and seek and his old bedroom doorknob got weirdly stuck and he was trapped in his room for a short time until I could get the doorknob off. He was shrieking about how he would be stuck in there forever and at one point yelled “MY LIFE IS KILLED!” It took everything I had not to dissolve into laughter as I tried to reassure him that I would get the doorknob off asap.
That is hilarious 😆
My daughter is the most dramatic child in the universe and would 110% yell “YOU RUINED ME!!” or “MY LIFE IS KILLED!!” These stories gave me the giggles at work; glad the kids involved are fine, and it’s hilarious when they go all “Days of Our Lives” with the OTT dramatic flair!! 😉
Yes, they can be drama queens at that age. I found a neighbour outside in the hallway of our apartment in a panic. She had gone to put her garbage down the shoot and her three year old had closed the door behind her. He was crying as he couldn’t see mommy and was unable to follow her instructions on how to open the door and she was terrified he would hurt himself. I ran downstairs and got the superintendent who used a master key to open the door. Oh the tears from the little boy! Of course, they stopped once we opened the door. So yeah, some little ones can bring the drama.
Ok. First of all I am happy the kid is doing ok. Second of all, she should think of the damage to her kids brains when they will get older and read that story about sex she proudly wrote. My dear God. The level of disrespect she and her husband show to the girl who in her words helped with their sex life. A way to teach your sons the respect of women regardless of what they do or what profession they choose. This lady is despicable.
Agreed!
I’m sure their son will be used to their parents antics by the time he’s old enough to read, surely he won’t be embarrassed. I don’t see anything wrong with trying to spice up your sex life with another woman, even if she gets paid for it, to each their own. How was it disrespectful? If I remember correctly there were 3 or 4 different prostitutes and sex never actually happened.
But why post this on social media? I cannot imagine my parents being attention whores when I was this young, and posting personal crap for everyone to read. It has gotten so out of hand we think it’s normal now.
My parents were pretty open about their sex life:”we have se*, that’s how you were made. There’s no shame about it”; “yes, I walk naked after shower, this is body of a woman who gave borth, there’s nothing shameful about human body.” ; “sometimes, there is a reason why you should listen to your parents-knock before you enter. if you don’t, we can’t guarantee we’ll be “decent”.”
and I grew up into a pretty normal person who knows that se* and nudity are normal, everyday part of life. 🙂
Maybe it’s difference in Europe and puritanism in USA, but I don’t get all that commotion about “oh my, but the children will one day read that…”-yeah, they will and they will know that their parents are their own persons, and not machines living in constant fear of what will they children one day say.
ok but this is a post about a mother who dropped their kid and fractured his skull…
I’m so jealous of that mentality, I’m still trying to undo years of shame surrounding sex and my body, your parents did a wonderful thing for you. I’m trying to make sure I do that for my daughter! I feel guilt and shame after sex or masturbation, every single time no matter how much fun I have. I get this feeling that I’m disgusting, for a few minutes then I work through it. Sex is supposed to pleasurable, not a chore women do to have children. I’m so sick of that American mentality!
I agree with you, it is tmi but I think maybe she posted it in case it was leaked and then people would jump in and SCREAM ‘child abuse’.
Especially if she generally posts a lot of information daily.
She can’t win.
She’s a misogynistic piece of shit. Be bwave again, Jenny, people still don’t care about you. Glad her son is fine.
She was getting so much hate from the sanctimoms on the post I saw on Facebook yesterday, made me sad. Accidents happen, it doesn’t make her a bad mother, it happens! When my daughter was first born I bonked her head on the door frame a couple of times, I wasn’t used to the extra width when I walked through the house I guess! She’s perfectly fine thankfully;)
Personally I find her pretty funny and honest, she’s not for everyone but I think it’s refreshing.
My mom tripped and fell on some stairs at church while holding my one year old son. They both went down and hit the back of his head hard, we took him to urgent care to get checked just because he was so small. He was totally fine but my mom was shaking like a leaf for 24 hours, wouldn’t stop apologizing no matter how much we reassured her that we know it was a complete accident and he’s ok… she was really upset by it. I understand!
Later we started joking that it happened because she dared to set foot in a church (she’s an atheist). We laugh about it now but at the time it was really hard for her.
I have hurt my kids by mistake here and there, it breaks your heart. They are so small, you are so big comparatively, and many people (myself included) are clumsy. Things happen. Your heart breaks and then you thank your lucky stars that your child is alright and you just have to move on from the incident!
Another story: when I was 3 or 4 I was sitting on a swing waiting to be pushed. My very gentle, very big dad grabbed my ankles and pulled me, to start me swinging. Well I wasn’t holding on to the swing, I slipped right off the swing and fell straight down hard onto my butt. The wind was knocked out of me and it hurt very much. I have spinal problems (scoliosis and degenerative disks) and my poor dad truly wondered for the rest of his life if that hard fall into my lower spine made things worse for me. I hate that it haunted him all his life. He was the most gentle person you could imagine.
Oh wow, I can relate to your mom. When my son was a toddler he tumbled down an entire flight of wooden stairs hard into the wall near the bottom. He was fine but my legs were still shaking hours later. When I think about how many times I went up and down stairs with my babies it does make me wonder how I never slipped or tripped or anything.
And your poor dad, too. As the cliche says, parenting means having your heart be forever outside your body. Sigh.
Mom guilt is a bitch. My oldest fell off my back at 2 and fractured her leg, this was 8 years ago and it often pops into my head and I feel horrified all over again. My youngest decided to fling herself down a flight of stairs at 2 and busted her head wide open. I wasn’t watching her closely enough and I will never forget and this was 6 years ago. Both kids are totally fine but these things will never leave my brain.
I certainly have one or two stories to tell about crazy, wrangling baby boys rolling away one second of me reaching for something or other lol. But the scariest moment in my life happened to me. Mom was driving us to her crazy family in Tennessee. One of her sister’s house was nestled near a mountain top. Mom put the car in low gear for the long trek up a straight, steep incline. My boisterous three-year-old unbuckled self was looking out the rear window. Finally at the top, mom parks the car and gets out to run give her sister a hug. Then the car slowly rolls backward. It’s heading back the same way we came up, and it’s not slowing. I’m still looking out the back window but screaming because all of a sudden, I’m looking at a very steep decline that crosses a winding highway then a Thelma-and-Louise exit off the side of wooded mountain. Mom must have bolted as I was fixed on where I was headed. The car had made it to the decline, the angle still gives me shudders lol, but mom deftly applied breaks, turned the car on and drove to safer territory. We used to talk about it all the time lol. I miss her.
That was a great story, mabs, thanks for sharing it. I’m sorry you lost her. 💕
“Mom was driving to her crazy family in Tennessee”. Say no more, say no more, we all understand. I dated a man from Kentucky recently – wonderful southern charm and manners but a bat sh*t crazy family.
When my son was around 6 months old, we took him to visit my grandma in Chicago. She had us all sleeping in her basement as a family, and she had this makeshift changing table set up for us. Well, at like 4 AM, my son woke up and needed a diaper change. My husband got up to change him but was stumbling around in the dark and couldn’t find the diapers, so he left my son laying on this makeshift changing table and walked away for like 2 seconds to find the diapers.
Of course my son rolled off the table and THWACK, hit the hard cement of the basement floor. It was the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life. He screamed and screamed, but luckily was/is fine. I still get anxiety and nausea thinking about it, though.
All this to say, every parent has this story, if not several of them.
I don’t know her but a similar thing happened when my first child was an infant. He wasn’t hurt thank goodness and only cried for a minute but I cried for about 3 hours over it.
So easy to screw up as a parent. We’ve all done it. I have to admit some of her Instagram posts are really funny.
This is relatable but what is this industry of actors wives who are “entrepreneurs, actresses and authors” despite having zero IMDB and their entire “business” is being so and so’s wife on Instagram? I’m thinking of a lot of Ayesha curry, this broad, Elizabeth chambers. I’m not begrudging anyone their happiness but let’s stop acting like she is an author or bird bakery is considered remarkable for any other reason than being celebrity adjacent. It is like this weird form of nepotism that is fine but also get off my Instagram favorites feed.
But in all your stories, your kids are fine. She dropped a FIVE-year-old hard enough that his SKULL fractured?? I have a hard time understanding how that could happen without external force, shall we say.
Eh, it really depends on what he landed on. If she tripped, it would’ve provided momentum when he fell out of her arm, and if he landed head first at a wrong angle on something like cement, a fracture could easily happen. I knew somebody growing up who had no memories of their early childhood because they fell into the edge of a glass table around age 4-5. It did enough brain damage to cause permanent amnesia, though their other faculties were fortunately left intact. Kids are an alarming mix of very hardy and extremely delicate.
I’d be willing to bet he fell backward and landed on his head. When you’re holding a big kid, if they rear back, you can’t take the momentum. He probably tipped back and flipped over while she was still holding his legs.
My 8 year old son tries to get me to hold him sometimes and I’m like, ok buddy, you can’t move though. His weight is too close to mine and our center of gravity too high for me to control him.
We have no idea how it happened, he could have been up on her shoulders, on her back, in a swimming pool.
All he needed to do was wack his head on a counter, table, hard floor on the way down to crack his skull.
I’m thinking you must not have kids.
Fun story: My parents went on a vacation to…Holland? I think. I was a baby at the time, and it was somewhere in the Netherlands. But around the coastal areas, some places have these massive levees/sea walls to protect against flooding, and there are areas where you can look out over them to see the ocean. Apparently, my father got too close to the edge while carrying me in those little baby backpacks, and he fell over the edge. My mother dove after him because the only thing that kept us from drowning was a tiny ledge at the bottom, which my mother slid toward because she could see I was falling out of the backpack. People had to form a human chain to rescue us…except after saving my mother and me, they left my father down there, and he had to scuttle along the bottom of the dike until he reached an exit point to climb back up.
My mother has never let him live it down, even thirty years and a divorce later.
OMG! 🙂
her social media is TMI
I dropped my son by accident when he was barely 7 months old. I was sitting with him at 5am and a spider walked across my arm. I instinctively stood up and brushed it off forgetting that my son was sitting in my lap. He was fine after a few seconds and nobody knew it ever happened (except him because I told him much later) but I still am traumatized about it. I cannot imagine what she must feel. My son is now 18 btw way so this was some time ago
I’m glad her son is fine but her husband, blech.
I banged my newborn son’s head on a clothing rack at Target. We stopped at Target on the way home from the hospital, I forget why now but it was important, and as I was walking around holding him I turned and smacked it right on a metal part sticking out. I freaked out thinking I hurt him, my mom is laughing at me for freaking out, and my son barely opened his eyes at all. My dad in total deadpan says “yep, that first dent is always the worst” (as if he were a new car).
And when he was around 2 I sliced his ear while cutting his hair. I’m sure there are many more but those are the two that I remember the most.
When my daughter was a baby, she rolled off her changing table (onto a carpeted floor) and I knew she was fine, BUT ALSO I was convinced she had a brain injury and increased intracranial pressure. My mom was Peds nurse so I called her over to do an assessment, and I was like, “give it to me straight, Ma… is she gonna make it??”. My mom was like “…. well OF COURSE! What are you even talking about, she wont even have a bruise”. And then I cried out of relief and shame and my mom made me some chamomile tea.
And then when she (my daughter) was about 5 or so, she was playing around on the stairs and somehow hurt ankle. I was right behind her when I heard her wail, and when I turned around she was clutching her legs yelling “I’m not okay!” … and I kind of… laughed. It just looked so dramatic, and I really thought she had just scared herself and was being super dramatic. But then she said “mommy, it hurts- why are you laughing” and that is still the worst thing I have ever heard in my life. The way I felt when I heard her is still the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life, and if I had the chance for just one do-over in my life, that moment is the one I would change. I will never forgive myself. I dont really do guilt or shame- I fuck up, I apologize, I try to fix it, I move on. But that thing with my daughter is the one exception. I have never been so deeply ashamed of myself, or so desperately sorry for anything. (She was okay, btw- a little RICE for her ankle and Tylenol and she was okay the next day.)
I dont know anything about the mom who posted about her kid, but goddamn, I can relate so hard. And I feel bad for the kid, of course, but my black and shriveled heart goes out to his mom. I don’t care who she is, that shit gets me where I live.
Just yesterday my 4 year old decided to put unnecessary bandaids all over her legs. She and my 6 year old son and I were walking out the door to go to grandma’s house and I playfully reached down and tugged on one of them giggling over the “invisible boo boos” – I must have tugged too hard because she shrieked and started crying. Then she looked up at me with the saddest eyes, huge tears rolling down her face and said “why did you DO that”? I felt like the absolute worst mother ever – she thought I intentionally hurt her. My son immediately hugged her and said, “you’ll be OK” and I’ve never felt so small as in that moment. I have tears in my eyes now just thinking about it……….Then there was the time she fell down 8 stairs while on vacation because she was 1 and I forgot to latch the baby gate. We all accidentally do things we aren’t proud of. Luckily most of the time the consequences are minor. My mom accidentally slammed my ankle in a car door once. I limped for weeks just when I was around her to rub it in. 😉
I only have one story that still stops my heart. My infant was in a bassinet next to my bed and night stand. She wasn’t sitting up or pulling up yet. I was going to the rest room and I hear her blood curling screams. I run in and my heart sinks she’s not in her bassinet?! I turn the lights on and she chose that moment to pull up, fell face first on my wooden night stand, then landed face first on my hardwood floor. Her entire face/eye/cheek area was swollen close and red. No blood. I PANICKED like I have never panicked before. One trip to the ER later, and she was fine, just banged and bruised up. I felt like the worst mom on the planet. The ER doctor said “she’s going to be fine, but you won’t be(with a gentle smile).” Then followed by “she’s fine, you are fine, I promise this happens to lots of people!” I still can’t believe that happened!!!! Ugh.
When I was three, I decided that standing on a ball would be a good idea. I fell off and whacked my head on the corner of our coffee table and started bleeding. I still have the scar right on my hairline. It’s smack dab in the middle. I have good aim!
I’m with Venus. Her kid is 5 and she dropped him. It wasn’t her one year old. How do you drop a 5 year old to the point the child fractures his skull. Many moms are saying omg stuff happens, which it does, or this and that happened to my 6 month old or my 2 year old but a mom dropping a 5 year old? Sorry there’s more to this story. Keep an eye on this lady.
My soul shattered right when I read the title, and I had to click to check if the kid is ok (phew). Accidents involving children are the worst.
Oh, I feel for her. She’d be running that incident through her head non-stop and the guilt is palpable.
When my son was 17 months old, I watched him fall backwards down a flight of stairs (about 10 steps) at a friend’s house. I noticed he was too close to the top, and gingerly made my way over so as to not startle him, but down he went anyway. It was the single most terrifying moment for me as a parent. The fall, and the look on his tiny face, is forever burned into my brain (in slo-mo too). and the look on his little face *clutches heart* Thank God he was ok, but holy shit…
He’s 5 now, but the hangover effect has lasted and to this day I have terrible anxiety when he is on or near stairs.
I hope she doesn’t beat herself up too much. Pretty sure there’ll be plenty of sanctamonious people on social media doing that for her…
You handled this post beautifully.
My Grandfather, who was an anesthesiologist (he was a pretty big one in our area), dropped my aunt on her head causing her to have a grand mal seizure. Her IQ is below average and she has arthritis all over her body since the age of 12. They’re not sure if dropping her on her head has had anything to do with her condition now but I know my Papa always blamed himself and took care of her until the day he died. Just saying this can happen to anyone, accidents happen, people aren’t perfect. I feel for this lady immensely!
Lessons to be learned – the day you walk away from the bed is the day they decide to learn to roll over and off… The two seconds you have your eyes averted is when they decide to see if they can walk on the water in the swimming pool….The time you go down the hall to get something is the time they open all the shelves and tip the chest of drawers. We have all been there and sometimes we have been so damn lucky – could’ve turned out way differently.
SO: arms reach at all times while changing diapers, in the baby bath, or in the swimming pool.
Out of the bassinet when they get near to rolling over. Anchor your heavy furniture. Put the meds and the cleaning stuff out of reach.
This has been a pediatric public service announcement. Safe kids, less guilt.
I just wish we could let go of this language of “he fractured his skull.”
*He* did not fracture his skull.
He was dropped, and his skull was fractured when his head hit the ground.
i have a thought on why celebs spill ish like this…. not only can they adversely garner some weird support but also nurses, hospitals, docs, and whatnot be leaking ish and then when the whispers get loud enough you can get a investigation (come one we’ve all seen this happen) but if you release the info (somewhat) on your own platform in a self deprecating like hey i had a shitty moment, i’m only human to the civilian audience you end up handling the narrative and then garnering support (again as I mentioned)
this is CLASSIC PR work and to that i shake my head and say BRAVA