The parents of a Winnipeg toddler who fell out of a second-storey apartment window Saturday say backlash they received online was hurtful and unwarranted.

Christopher Genaille and Nevada Anderson's 15-month-old daughter Emma-Marie was knocked unconscious after tumbling to the pavement.

Doctors told the parents their daughter is lucky to be alive. (Althea Guiboche)

After details of the fall circulated Saturday afternoon, the couple said they received a flood of comments and messages online from people who questioned their parenting skills.

"As soon as I started reading those comments, it just made things 100 times worse," Genaille said.

Genaille said one person asked where the toddler's parents were and questioned if they were getting high.

"And it's like, 'Well, we don't even do that,'" he said.

Anderson said one of her Facebook friends made a judgmental post about the fall after reading a news story, not realizing it was her daughter who fell.

"They were calling the parents, so us, really stupid people and all that, and once she found out it was me and my daughter, she deleted that whole post about us," she said.

Emma-Marie's grandmother, Althea Guiboche, a Winnipeg Indigenous activist known to many as Bannock Lady, said she also saw backlash about her granddaughter's fall.

"The comments were just unnecessary and hurtful," Guiboche said.

'Face down on the ground'

Anderson said she was just about three feet away (about a metre) from her daughter when she climbed up on a couch and fell out the window after popping its screen.

"I didn't see her fall or anything. I just looked out the window and she was laying there face down on the ground, and that image has been haunting me since it happened and it's really, really hard," Anderson said.

"I ran outside as fast as I could and I know that people say not to move them or whatever, but I couldn't leave my baby laying there on the ground, so I picked her up right away."

Nevada Anderson, left, and Christopher Genaille, parents of Emma-Marie, and the toddler's grandmother, Althea Guiboche, say backlash they received online after the child fell out of her parents' apartment window was hurtful. (Austin Grabish/CBC)

Paramedics rushed Emma-Marie, who was unconscious and in critical condition, to hospital. The toddler was in the intensive-care unit at the Children's Hospital of Winnipeg as of Sunday evening.

Genaille said doctors expect his daughter to make a full recovery, but she has two skull fractures, two brain bleeds and is getting an MRI tomorrow to see if she has any damage to her spine.

He said doctors have told him his daughter is lucky to be alive.

"It was a 50/50 shot and it was all about how she fell and landed," Genaille added.