I am a bad mother. A very, very bad mother.
Today, we took Amos to the doctor for his checkup. He was especially fussy last night, so I was worried that he was teething and would be grumpy for the appointment. In fact, it took everything possible to try to get him to sleep last night. He cried, he kicked, he screamed, and he yelled, "Mama! Mama!" Finally, sounds from the hairdryer helped him to fall asleep around 2am.
And then we went to the doctor today.
After undressing him to weigh him at the doctor's, I started inspecting him. I suspect that I inspected him so that there weren't any boogers or stray bits of food on him that would tell the doctor, "Hey, these people don't wash their kid." No one wants to have a dirty baby at the doctor's office, right?
And then I saw it.
His toe. The toe next to the big toe on his right foot.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!!!!
It was swollen. Horribly swollen. Something was choking it. I looked closer, and found that a hair or string was tightly wound around his toe, so much so that the circulation was being cut off.
Folks, it was one of the hairs from my head. MY HAIR. And I couldn't pull it off. I tried, and Amos yelped in pain.
OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD!!!!
Phil and I fretted over the toe. How did my hair get there?! He's going to lose his toe!! ARGH!!
I found the nurse and asked for tweezers, giving a feeble reason. "Um. There's a hair wrapped around his toe, and we REALLY need to get it off. I think it's my hair."
"How do you know it's your hair?"
"I JUST DO."
She brought the tweezers, then immediately decided that the doctor should do it instead because the hair was cutting into the skin on the underside of his tootsie. ARGH!!! So, the doctor came in and tweezed the hair off of his toe. Amos was calm and collected as he watched in fascination. I felt like I was about to faint. I kept saying, "Ugh. I feel so bad. That's MY hair."
The hair was wrapped many times very tightly around his poor, little toe. We all looked at it in amazement. How the HECK did that happen?!
So, now he is home and seemingly okay. He fusses a little. The toe is not much improved in the way of being swollen, so now I think I may need to take him into the hospital or back to the doctor to have it lanced. UGH!!
Thankfully, this freak accident isn't just my problem. There are many mothers who have experienced this. I've never heard of it, but it happens a lot. Crazy! Here is the scientific view of this occurrence, known as hair/thread tourniquet syndrome.
So, I think this is a great reason to shave my head. The last thing I ever wanted to do was use my hair as a weapon against my child. Good grief. I need a break here, man. I'm really done with all of the family medical issues.
Like I said, I need a haircut. Should I take it all off? Heh.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Reasons to go bald
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19 beautiful people muttered something back:
OMG!!! I've never heard of that!!! Dont' shave your head, though!! It was a fluke for sure!! Just keep an eye on the toe!!
Just to let you know the exact same thing happened with my son Aaron onloy it was his little toe. That is why I cut my hair extremely short for this baby, so it wouldn't happen again. Seriously.
Put some neosporin on his toe, that helped for Aaron and it got better quick.
That is so weird, I just read a story in American Baby about that. Don't shave your head though, just be careful when he wears footed pajamas and onesies and check his feet, which I'm sure you'll be doing now anyway.
Sadie - It's bizarre, isn't it?! People always compliment me on my long, curly hair. And now, I couldn't hate it more. Argh.
Kim - Ack! You and I seem to have the same things happen to our kids. Is it a Marion thing? Ha! We have him slathered with antibacterial cream. He doesn't seem to care about anything right now, but I'm all flushed. Haha.
Allie Bear - Really?! I should get a subscription to that. Maybe I would have figured it out last night instead of today. That's the worst part: knowing that Amos was suffering last night, and we never knew why.
That's part of why I wanted to chop my hair off as soon as I had my oldest! I kept finding hair in diapers. Both boys pulled hair out of my head-how they ingested 10-15 inches of hair unnoticed, I will NEVER know.
Of course, now they're 8 and nearly 12 and I finally have the short hair. I will tell you, I am sorry I listened to Ed all these years, because it ends up he likes the hair short. I love love love having short hair. (I probably would have loved it even more when the boys were babies!)
I never heard of such a thing, but I can see how it would easily happen - especially with a mother who has long hair. I used to french braid my daughter's hair for her when she was young. Sometimes I'd get so much hair wrapped around my fingers that I could hardly finish the braid. Then I had to pick it all off when I was finished. I really clings and wraps itself around the digits.
You poor sweet thing. Now you know, I don't think you need to shave your head because you'll be watching for it. You don't qualify for bad mother just yet! :o)
That's just freaky! Never heard of it before.
No wonder the poor little mite couldn't sleep! Hope it's healing now.
Just keep Neosporin on his toe. The swelling will go down all by itself. Babies are remarkably resilient creatures. he'll be fine. The question is, will you be? Now that you know what to look for, it won't happen - or won't be allowed to affect him - again.
The swelling couldn't have been there long or you would have seen it when you bathed him, right?
I'm not a fan of Neosporin as a fix-all, but I'm sure your doc gave some recommendations for getting his toe back to baby size.
Don't worry. You've been completely sidetracked for the last month. Ponytail holders come in all kinds of pretty colors :)
eek! I've never heard of that happening before, but don't shave your hair!!
I'll be extra careful from now on with the lil dudes toes...
That's the very reason I shave my head.
It's not that I'm blad, because I'm not, I could grow it if I wanted to. It's just I don't want to.
Yep, this was freaky all right. Fortunately, Amos seems to be back to his normal, happy self now that the hair situation has been resolved. Some day it might be fun to tell him that as a child, he suffered from hair/thread tourniquet syndrome.
To do my part to prevent it from happening again, I will continue balding at the current rate.
My niece got a hair wrapped around a bump on her tongue (she was a young teen at the time...). It was almost impossible to get the dang thing off her tongue.
Thank God, it never happened with my daughter.. and I got long black hair and had (what I thought was) excessive postpartum hair loss. Whew!
This happened to a friend of mine recently. Same exact thing. Please don't cut your hair. It happens. :-)
Wow! I read about that when my daughter was 2 days old and became absolutely freakin' OBSESSED with checking both my kids feet on a regular basis. It's such a freaky thing and yet it seems to happen to a lot of people. It was just in Parents magazine last month in the "It Happened to Me" column.
I'm glad you caught it (at the doctor's already too - that's actually pretty lucky) and I hope his toe is OK.
Wow, this exact thing happened to me today. I Seriously that my daughter was going to lose her toe! I felt horrible that I didn't see it sooner, but it really isn't visible to the naked eye until the swelling starts or if you know what you are looking for. I ended up taking my daughter from the pediatrician to the ER because he couldn't be sure if he got all the hair out as it was so embedded. He said it cut almost all the way to the bone. He thought they might sedate her and give her stiches. But the Dr. at the ER didn't want to do stitches because he thought it could get infected. Ugh, I feel like a bad, bad mother right now. I wish I had noticed it sooner or even heard of this before. I thought she was fussy from teething ):
No child evr died b/c his mom had long hair. I hope you do NOT get a mommy cut. Rarely does short hair help a woman look better, if you care. Enjoy your son!
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