corrugated-iron shack. They alerted some adults and the baby was found lying next to the dog and her own pup.
At the time many people talked about guardian angels taking steps to ensure this baby lived, but the implications of this miracle reached far wider than the child involved because it drew a lot of attention to the desperate problem of abandoned babies in poverty-stricken areas of Kenya.
Then there are incredible stories of babies inexplicably surviving car crashes.
A Miracle!
In 2006 a seven-month-old baby was thrown through the back window of a car and bounced nearly 250 yards in his car seat down the fast lane of a dual carriageway near Teignmouth, Devon. Cars travelling at high speeds avoided him and he emerged from the ordeal with only a small bump on his head. Later, his father said it was ‘a miracle’ his son had not been killed. ‘Someone must have been looking down on us,’ he added.
Another Miracle Baby
In December 2008, newspapers in Sweden also talked of a ‘miracle baby’. This child survived a horrific crash when a car somersaulted into a ditch alongside the E18 motorway near Stockholm on Christmas Day.
All these stories were picked up by the media, but similar ones have also been sent to me over the years. They include incredible stories of babies surviving car, plane and train crashes or runaway prams being returned to safety by unseen hands. The following three stories, the first sent to me all the way from Australia by John, the second e-mailed to me by Karen and the third sent in by Amelia, are fairly typical–if there is such a thing as typical–of miracle baby-rescue stories.
Caught by an Angel
I was carrying my son Jake in his car seat across the road when I was hit by a car. I was hurled into the air and so was Jake. He must have been thrown about ten feet or so. Incredibly, neither of us was seriously hurt. It’s a miracle we are alive and have no broken bones. All I can remember is hearing a loud noise and then being thrown. When I got up, my first thought was for Jake. Everyone says thank goodness he was well strapped into his car seat, but I say thank goodness our guardian angels were close by.
Like John, Karen is convinced that her baby has a guardian angel.
The Angel on the Escalator
This is one of the strangest things, if not the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, and my best friend’s sister said something similar happened to her as well, so there must be angels working on escalators. It happened when my daughter was five months old. I was out shopping with my sister, as I figured I needed a bit of a treat, but as any mum knows, shopping with a baby involves carrying a lot of stuff: nappies, pushchairs, wipes, bottles, a change of baby clothes and so on and on. The toughest task for me, though, was getting up and down the escalators with the pushchair. Normally I’d have taken the lift, but it was very crowded that day so I decided to take a risk and use the escalator instead.
My sister got onto the escalator and then I rolled my pushchair onto it with my daughter strapped in. A teenage boy with his iPod playing got on behind me and although I was aware that he was two or three steps behind and wearing a white hood, my main focus was on keeping my pushchair upright.
When we got to the bottom my sister got off and I began to roll the pushchair off behind her, but I felt a little dizzy and lost my balance. I fell over and my body weight pushed the pushchair away from me at speed and hurled it over to one side. I ended up on all fours with a very painful pair of knees.
I got up and for a moment or two froze with fear. I could hear my heart beating but not my baby crying. I ran to my pushchair, which had skidded several feet from the bottom of the escalator, and it was empty. I turned around and standing at the bottom of the escalator was the boy in the white hoodie, holding my little girl in his arms. She was fine and smiling. Still shaking, I took her and covered her with kisses. I can’t have looked away for more than a few moments, but when I looked up again to thank him and ask him how he had got her out of the pushchair so fast, he had gone.
I asked my sister, who by now had rushed to my side, if she knew where the boy had gone and she said she hadn’t seen a boy. She said I had got my baby out of the pushchair, but I know that it hadn’t been me but the boy. I ran ahead and looked for him, but there was no trace of him.
This remarkable story sent to me by Amelia also features a pushchair.
Hit Really Hard
This happened to me last month and I had to write and tell you about it. I’m a psychologist and have never believed in angels or any of that stuff. I thought it was all wish fulfilment or imagination, but everything has turned upside down for me now and I’m willing to believe the impossible can happen.
I was staying with my husband’s family in Austria and decided to take my young son for a walk in his pushchair. I walked for a while along a main road and then decided to cross over. There were no cars coming so I started to walk across. As I did so, though, I heard a car coming extremely fast from the right. I had no chance of getting away. With a presence of mind I didn’t think I had, I pushed the pushchair away from me so that at least my son would be saved and then I ran after it. I must have pushed too hard, though, as the pushchair bounced off the curb and started to roll back into the road. At the same time I slipped and fell, banging my head. We were both going to die.
Then a woman ran out from the pavement and stepped in front of the car. The driver obviously saw her, because he tried to swerve but didn’t quite make it and the woman was hit hard and thrown into the air. The driver then lost control and skidded into a brick wall, crushing the car and very probably himself. This all happened really quickly while I was still trying to get up.
As soon as I was up, my first instinct was to run to my baby and pull the pushchair out of the road. There was blood trickling down my face from where I had fallen and I must have been hysterical.
By then a police car had pulled up by the crash scene, followed by several others. Later I would learn that they had been chasing the driver of the car, as he was a dangerous car thief. They started to pull him out of the car and his body was limp and bloody. This made me think of the woman who had stepped out into the road. The force with which the car had hit her must have caused terrible injuries. I looked round, but I couldn’t see her anywhere. I asked the policemen to look but they couldn’t find her either. The only other person who had seen her was the driver of the car, but he died two days later in hospital, leaving me as the only witness.
People say the bang on my head must have caused hallucinations, but I know what I saw and I believe that woman was an angel. I wasn’t imagining it, whatever people say, and I know she saved my life and the life of my son.
Miraculous baby-rescue stories may force even the most sceptical of people to at least consider the possibility that something or someone not of this world is watching over a child. But as sensational as stories like this are, they are also fairly rare. Far more common but less well known are stories where babies are not in life or death situations yet still have guardian angels watching over them.
What Were They Looking At?
While I have been researching and writing this book, countless parents have told me they believe that babies have the ability to see angels or the spirits of departed loved ones. They believe this because they have seen a baby, either their own or someone else’s, stare at a particular spot in a room, typically the ceiling, and appear captivated by it, occasionally smiling or cooing as if they are communicating with someone invisible. Sometimes the baby will even lift their arms towards the invisible presence as if wanting to be picked up. Adults can’t see anything themselves and
