Babycam captures horrifying moment toddler breaks mom’s nose

A Massachusetts mom has shared footage of the excruciating moment her toddler accidentally broke her nose during a bedtime gone wrong.

Kailynn Palaima was left requiring surgery after the mishap involving her 18-month-old son.

The painful incident was captured on a nearby babycam and makes for difficult viewing. That hasn’t stopped the clip from going viral on TikTok.

At the time of writing, the video shared under the handle @kailynnpalaima has been viewed 17 million times.

Bedtime can often be a source of stress for parents of young children. In 2024, a major nationally representative poll of 781 U.S. parents of children ages 1–6 found 27 percent found getting their child to bed difficult.

Palaima is the first to admit she struggles with her son. “My son has never been a good sleeper,” Palaima told Newsweek.

The evening captured in her viral clip was no different. “That night he was fighting me to sleep,” Palaima said. “I had the TV on to calm him down but he still didn’t want to lay down.” 

As the video shows, for a brief moment it appears as though Palaima has succeeded in getting her son to settle. However, he is soon back up again.

That’s when Palaima tries to intervene to settle him again. It doesn’t go well, with her son throwing his head back and smashing her square in the nose instead.

“I thought he was going to lay down,” Palaima said. “Immediately after getting him to lay he sat back up and head butted me.”

The sound, coupled with Palaima’s obvious anguish make it a difficult watch. It was certainly a painful one and one that left a pretty major impact on Palaima: a broken nose.

“I met with a surgeon and he broke the bone, cartilage and deviated my septum,” she said.

Despite the obvious pain she was in, Palaima was able to keep relatively calm. Her son, meanwhile, was left in floods of tears having evidently realized, on some level, what he had done.

“I think I was calm because I was in shock and I knew he didn’t mean to do it, he’s only 18 months old and it scared him hence the crying,” Palaima said.

It was only afterwards that Palaima realized the whole thing had been captured on the babycam.

“I realized it was on film when I was trying to tell my husband what happened and explain and I remembered the baby cam was on,” she said.

She’s definitely going to take extra care with bedtime from now on and certainly won’t be sitting or standing behind her son again anytime soon.