'I feel like the sh*ttiest mum ever because I didn't know my toddler could do this'

"Horror story of the year! I'm not going to sleep well for a long time," the shaken mum says in a video that will terrify every parent.

This "horror story", as the mum concerned calls it, began like every night for billions of parents around the world.

The woman, who posts under the name @mustangashley9 on TikTok, put her kids to bed at 8pm. She checked on her two-year-old at 10:30pm before she went to bed, and all was right in the world.

"I open the door. I see him in his bed," she tells viewers in the TikTok about the night. "He's perfectly fine."

Next thing she knows, she's being woken up by police standing in her bedroom.

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The distraught mum was still shaken by her toddler's 'adventure' days later. Source: TikTok

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"Woken by three police officers"

The mum says that at around 1:45am, she was "woken up by three police officers coming into my bedroom. Not my front door. My bedroom."

The police tell the mum and her husband that they, "found a toddler outside in the front yard, crying and screaming, and cold. We have him outside waiting in an ambulance."

She adds, "I, just being woken up from a dead sleep, rush into my son's room to find him not there. And then proceed to run down the stairs, out the door, completely barefoot, with no coat, and down the block to find my son."

The mum is alright now, and her toddler was fine - but she will never forget the terror of those moments.

"I did not wake to the baby monitor that is stationed in his room, to the door opening, to police officers knocking on my door, to anything at all," she shares, confused.

And it seems that her 'back ups' - her husband, mother-in-law, and her other child didn't wake up, either. The biggest surprise was that the dog didn't bark at any activity.

"No one else in my house woke either until the police officers arrived in my bedroom," she adds.

All of this has led the mum to feel intense guilt. "I don’t know how long he was out there. I feel like the shittiest mum ever."

She concludes her video by saying, "I am not going to sleep well for a very long time."

Every parent's nightmare. Source: TikTok

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"My kid ran onto a highway when he was three"

Viewers gave the distraught mum some comfort, sharing their own stories of 'near-misses'.

"I think all parents have a scare with their little ones getting out. It happened to me. I got the locks for the top of my doors as a secondary measure," shared one.

"I have one that went to the ER twice and had to call Poison Control within six weeks. I was convinced 'they' would take my kids away," recalled another.

Other parents tried to tell the mum to not be too hard on herself.

"When my oldest was three he ran into a three-lane highway when I was buckling his little brother into the car seat. He was fine, I was not," wrote one viewer.

Some reassured the mum that she'd only be a "bad mum" if she didn't care, with one writing, "You can tell you are a mum that loves your kids just by being humble in this video."

Originally published as 'I feel like the sh*ttiest mum ever because I didn't know my toddler could do this'