One of the most important things to any parent is making sure that their baby is as safe as possible. When we care for our babies, we don’t really expect anything bad to happen but one Michigan mother is talking about an imminent danger that caught her by surprise. It is a medical condition that is not typically known but this mother is spreading the word far and wide to ensure that other parents don’t experience the same difficulty as her.
It started when Heather’s son, Jacob, was 10 weeks old. She had recently put him down for a two-hour nap and was now busy changing his diaper. Jacob was a baby that never really fussed much over anything, so when he woke up from his sleep, Heather checked his diaper to make sure there wasn’t any need to change it. That is when she saw his toes. She couldn’t believe that they had turned a dark shade of blue while he was sleeping!
Jacobs father, Tommy, had come into the room to help get Jacob ready after his nap. He and Heather were going to a party that evening so he wanted to take the time to help her feed the baby, change the diaper and put him in fresh clothes.
“I handed him to his dad Tommy to put socks on him when Tommy realized his two toes were blue and tied together with a strand of hair!!! I immediately took off what I could and had to take him to the ER where we spent an hour and a team of 5 doctors trying to get the rest of MY HAIR off his two toes…”
Doctors told her that they would have probably had to amputate the toes if she had not removed the hair before coming to the hospital.
Heather is now urging parents everywhere to check their baby carefully. The medical diagnosis is ‘hair tourniquet syndrome’ and it is more common than most people realize.
“CHECK YOUR BABYS TOES AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN!!! And if you have a baby boy even his PENIS. Yes I said penis… they are such tiny baby’s and our hair can be such a hazard but it’s something that we never really pay attention to.. so plz share this with all your mom friends with little babies!!!!”
Heather took this picture about 12 hours after they had removed the hair. It still looks very painful and raw. She was crying when she thought about how this must have made her poor baby feel.
As they say, knowledge is power and this mom wants to provide as much knowledge as possible on this serious subject. We will often go out of our way to baby-proof the home but it’s important to remember that for a newborn’s toes, a strand of hair is like a razor-sharp wire.
Honestly, I didn’t even know that this was a medical problem, but I’m thankful that I know about it now.