Stray Strings: A Cautionary Tale
My 12-week old daughter absolutely hates having her feet exposed. Even in the hospital, if one little foot worked itself free of the swaddling, she would cry and cry. She spent the first eight weeks of her life clad in blanket sleepers so I wouldn’t have to worry about an exposed foot waking her in the middle of the night.
When I started dressing her in little pants and onesies, I always took care to inspect the inside of her socks for stray strings that could wrap around one of her little toes. But I never thought to check the inside of her footie pajamas.
Today while I was writing a blog post my husband was watching the baby. I ran into our room when I heard him call out, “Come here, I need your help.” His voice was calm but urgent; I knew it was an emergency of some kind.
We have a changing table in our bedroom so I expected to walk into a poop-filled disaster. Instead, I saw my husband with the baby scissors out, doing something with our daughter’s wriggling foot.
“She has a string wrapped around her toe,” he said.
I calmed my daughter with kisses and stroking and simultaneously held the other foot down while he tried to extricate the nylon string that had wrapped itself tightly, in several layers, around our daughter’s middle toe, which was quite red. It was scary but I remained calm… of course, he didn’t want to pull the string and wind up cutting her, but we had to make sure every bit of string was removed.
When it was finally done, I massaged her toe and foot to get the blood flowing, and made sure she could still wiggle that toe. She seemed none the worse for the wear, and stopped crying as soon as we had finished.
Before dressing her again, I turned the pajamas inside out to remove every small string I could find. From now on, I will check every piece of clothing before I put it on her for any bit of string or thread. Even threads that are shorter than half-an-inch, too small to get wrapped around a finger or toe, should be cut. Any small thread can suddenly pull and turn into a giant, dangerous string.
This is also a good time to remind parents that baby’s clothes should not have strings or bows that hang down, and it’s a good idea to keep strings off your own clothes, as well. I’ve pulled all the strings out of my hoodies and I tuck the strings on my sweatpants and pajamas into my pants.
Am I a bit paranoid about this? Probably. But a friend of mine has a son who lost his finger when it got wrapped around the string of a window shade. And I remember when my nephew was only 2 years old, we had to pull over on the side of a major parkway to extricate his finger, which had gotten trapped by the stringy hair of his favorite Rugrats doll.
Our “string adventure” this morning was enough of a close call for me that I will be even more vigilant in the future. I know I can’t protect my daughter from every danger in this world, but I will do everything I can.
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Multi-Tasking Mommy says...
Oh my goodness, that is so scary! Thanks for the reminder
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