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A mum has been left traumatised and feeling like the 's***tiest mom ever' after her toddler snuck out of the house in the middle of the night.
TikToker @mustangashley9 held back tears as she shared what she's described as the 'horror story of the year', after police barged into her room in the middle of the night.
The mum explained that she had put her children to bed at around 8pm and checked up on her two-year-old toddler once more before going to bed herself.
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"I open the door, I see him in his bed... and he's perfectly fine. So I go to bed," she said.
"Then at about 1.45am, I am woken to three police officers coming into my bedroom - not my front door, my bedroom. Thank god this is a night that I chose to sleep in pyjamas."
Police informed Ashley that authorities had found her toddler 'crying and screaming and cold' in her front yard, and were holding him in an ambulance.
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"I, having just been 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 front door... and down the block to find my son," recalled the devastated mum.
"They parked him a good distance away just so he would be safe, just in case we were drug addicts or, you know, horrible people."
The biggest shock for Ashley and her husband was that neither of them woke at the sound of the baby monitor or even the police officers at her front door.
"No one else in my house woke either until police officers entered my bedroom.
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"My dog didn't bark - he always barks - my husband didn't wake up, my mother-in-law didn't wake up, no one.
"I don't know how long he was out there. I feel like the s***tiest mom ever."
The mum assured viewers that her son was 'perfectly healthy, safe, and fine', but admitted she's not going to sleep well 'for a very long time.'
In the hopes of reassuring the petrified mum, followers took to the comments to let her know that she definitely wasn't alone.
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"I think all parents have a scare with their little ones getting out", wrote one TikTok user. "It happened to me. I got the locks for the top of my doors as a secondary measure."
A second added: "This is the exact reason we have deadbolts at the top of our doors. Years ago My toddler got out front while I was asleep."
And a third told her: "I used to be judgmental of these stories until having a 2yo son. The amount of steps it takes to assure he survives everyday is astronomical."
Ali Condon