She's been gone for nearly 16 years, but Kimberly Amato still remembers her spunky little daughter Meghan clear as day. On December 18, 2004, the toddler died suddenly in a furniture tip-over accident, and before Amato knew it, her entire world turned upside down. In the years since, the Sterling, Massachusetts, mom has struggled with her grief while simultaneously warning other parents of what she wishes she had known. Now, she's pushing to have a child safety bill passed that could prevent other similar and unnecessary child deaths from happening.
The day Meghan died started out like any other.
As the day began to wind down, Amato put on the film Frosty the Snowman, which 3-year-old Meghan (aka "Meggie") watched before heading to bed.
Christmas was right around the corner, and the family was looking forward to doing so many things together. In fact, the very next day, Meggie was going to bake cookies with twin brother Ryan and older brother Kyle.
The mom remembers the time as joyous.
Just as she fondly remembers her bubbly toddler's unique personality.
"She was bossy and loud," Amato recently told Good Morning America. "She loved all animals from a caterpillar to a bird and her beloved cats — all named Duncan."
Everyone — and we do mean everyone — loved the little girl.
"She had everybody wrapped around her little finger," her mom went on. "Her twin was very laid back and Meghan was like, 'I want it and I want it now.' It was almost as if she knew she wasn't going to have a lot of time."
Tragically, she didn't have a lot of time.
The night of her daughter's death, Amato remembers tucking her children into bed and heading off to sleep around 10 p.m. herself.
But about 3:30 a.m., Meghan came in and woke her up.
"She had a stinky diaper [and would say], 'Mommy I'm a stinky girl,'" Amato told the news program. "I changed her diaper and said, 'It's not time to get up yet.' That was the last time I saw her alive."
The next morning, Amato awoke to a yell from her husband.
It was 8 a.m., and the tired mother of three had apparently overslept. But the tone of her husband's voice, as he begged her to come into the other room, left her shaken.
She knew something was wrong; she just didn't know what.
"I literally flew [to the bedroom]," she recalled. "I think my feet hit the ground three times."
There, trapped under a fallen dresser in her room, lay Meghan.
She was lifeless.
According to Amato, it appeared that the little girl had tried to remove clothing from her dresser when it tipped over and fell on top of her. None of the family members had heard it happen.
The moments that followed were a mix of panic and terror.
"I said, 'Meggie, come back to Mommy only if you can be Meggie,'" Amato recalled in the moments before paramedics arrived.
Meghan was rushed to a nearby hospital, only to be immediately airlifted to another medical center with a more extensive trauma ward.
Amato saw the writing on the wall.
"I knew in my heart she was gone," she shared. "I wasn't ready to accept it, I'm still not … but you always hold onto that hope."
According to doctors, Meghan died of suffocation.
Her parents were both in shock.
"I remember hanging my head and taking a deep breath," Amato said. "I remember saying, 'Can I see her?'"
Moments later, nurses allowed her to hold Meghan in her arms, wrapped in a blanket.
In the days that followed, Amato rushed to warn every parent she knew.
She wrote emails to friends and family, explaining what had happened and urging them to anchor their own furniture to the walls if they had young children.
Eventually, she created Meghan's Hope, which aims to spread awareness about furniture tip-over accidents and their many risks. She also became a founding member of the group Parents Against Tip-Overs, which consists of other parents who have suffered similar losses.
Amato's fight is far from over.
She is pushing for Congress to pass the STURDY Act (Stop Tip-Overs of Unstable Risky Dressers on Youth), which made it through the U.S. House last September but is now with the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce, and Transportation.
According to Good Morning America, the bill proposes that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issue a mandatory furniture safety standard within one year of its enactment.
It would also require testing on all clothing storage units, regardless of their height, to simulate various scenarios in which young children might interact with furniture to prevent tipping hazards. In addition, the bill would mandate strong warning requirements and labels on furniture.
Ultimately, anchoring furniture to the wall is the safest option.
"Anchoring right now is the only way to prevent a tip-over, and I would say properly anchoring is the only way," Amato said. Still, not all furniture comes with warnings about the importance of this or the potential risks for small children.
Amato's hope is that more parents are made aware about the possibility of furniture tipping over and know to anchor it as soon as possible. Her feeling is if additional safety measures are put into place, surely they could prevent so many unnecessary deaths from happening.
There certainly are a lot of accidents.
According to the CPSC, a child is injured from a falling dresser or TV every 43 minutes in the US. A 2019 report from the commission found that 556 fatalities were caused by tip-overs between 2000 and 2018. (The report found that 83% of them (or 459) involved victims 1 month old to 14 years old, whereas 14% involved senior citizens 60 or older.)
Amato would say that's 556 too many.
She works with the commission on the government-funded campaign known as Anchor It!, which aims to keep parents informed and prepared for potential child safety risks related to furniture and appliances. And she told Good Morning America that she sure hopes her daughter is looking down on her, proud.
In fact, that's exactly what she thought about when she attended her first Parents Against Tip-Overs meeting.
"The moms and dads, when we got together for the first time … it was incredibly emotional," Amato shared. "We said, 'Close your eyes and think of what our kids would say.' Our kids are all up there together looking down on us [saying], 'I'm so proud of you mommy and daddy for trying to save all these kids."
