Lindsay Dewey has shared the heartbreaking news that her 22-month-old son, Reed, died following a tragic accident involving an unsecured mirror in their home.
The parenting and homemaking influencer from Idaho opened up to her Instagram followers about the February incident that claimed the life of her youngest child.
According to the mom-of-three, the accident occurred when Reed was playing with a suction cup bowl. He had apparently been using it on a large mirror, sticking it on and pulling it back and forth. The repeated motion eventually caused the mirror to fall on him.
“To make a long story short, apparently Reed had one of his suction cup bowls and stuck it on the mirror and was pulling it ‘back and forth’ to pry it off (we’re assuming) and he pulled the mirror down on himself,” Dewey explained on Instagram. “I never even heard him playing by/with the mirror — until I heard it fall and then within 5 seconds I lifted it off of him.”
At the time of the accident, Dewey had been preparing dinner just 10 feet away. She initially believed her son was in another part of the house, still playing with magnetic tiles.
She described the mirror as “heavy duty” and noted that it had previously been stabilized by a chair, which had been moved shortly before the incident to clean up after the family dog.
“When it initially happened, I was so confused as to HOW it happened,” she wrote. “There is no way our kids are strong enough to move it, let alone pull it down on themselves. And we knew that so the urgency to anchor it wasn’t there. It seemed impossible for it to just randomly fall down for no reason considering its placement and weight. But when I picked it up and leaned it back on the wall, I noticed his bowl was stuck to it … I figured out EXACTLY how it happened.”
Reed sustained a fractured skull and suffered a severe traumatic brain injury. Though he was rushed to the hospital and placed in a coma, with some initial signs of pupil response and breathing, swelling ultimately left him with no brain function. Dewey said doctors determined he was brain dead days later.
“Never did we expect that it would be so serious that he wouldn’t survive it,” she said.
In the wake of his death, Reed became an organ donor. Dewey wrote, “I’ve been telling myself ‘If he doesn’t get his miracle, he will become one’ and that’s the only thing that’s getting me through. Even though his wasn’t saved, he is saving lives.”
“The worst day of our lives became the best day of someone else’s and for that I will forever be grateful for our little hero baby. You’re someone’s miracle, Reed Michael. 5 little kids miracle to be exact. I couldn’t stop thinking about the families who got the best call of their life, their answered prayer,” she added.
Dewey emphasized that the mirror had not been designed to be mounted or anchored, which added to the mistaken sense of safety. She also said her family typically kept a chair in front of the mirror for stability, which was absent only because of recent cleaning.
“There were so many details that led up to this being a perfect storm. All in all, just a tragic unexpected accident. That we can never take back,” she wrote.
While she acknowledged fears of backlash from strangers, Dewey said she decided to share the painful story to potentially help other families. “We both are still in complete shock that this is what took our baby from us. We’re only sharing this because we don’t want this happening to anybody,” she said.
Dewey described herself as a “protective mom,” with extensive safety measures already in place—child locks on windows, doors, gates, and outlets, and anchors on furniture. Still, this one oversight had devastating consequences.
“Mommy misses you so badly and I’m so sorry this happened to you my perfect baby boy,” she wrote.
Since the tragedy, a clothing brand called Little Hunters Wife has launched a “Remembering Reed” collection of apparel, with all profits going to support Dewey and her husband Eric.
In her grief, Dewey rejected the notion of becoming a public figure. “I’m just your average mama of three, homemaker, fire wife, who is obsessed with her family, living in Idaho,” she wrote. “To paint the picture that I’m just another self-centered influencer is appalling.”
