ER Visit Due to Toe Tourniquet
One of my friends recently forwarded me an article entitled, "New Parents, Do You Know What a 'Hair Tourniquet Is?" by Hollee Actman Becker on Parenting.com and asked me wasn't this what had happened to my daughter? The answer is yes, it did happen to her.
Basically the article talks about another family who noticed their daughter was upset during lunch and pulled off her sock to discover a hair wrapped around her toe. The good news is the mother was able to remove the hair with tweezers and a magnifying glass.
My story is a bit different. When my daughter was about a year old, I went to change her diaper by first unzipping her "feeted" pajamas. That's when I noticed her toe was super red and puffy. She was not upset at all, but I thought that her toe looked swollen so I looked closer. That's when I noticed a hair was wound around one of her toes so tightly, it was cutting off the circulation to her toe. I could barely see the hair because it was so embedded in her toe.
I immediately called the doctor who told me to give her a bath and see if I could get the hair to loosen enough to pull it off. This did not work so to the ER we went.
At the ER, the doctors told me they see this quite frequently in infants and young toddlers. The doctors said this usually happens when washing baby socks and hair gets inside the socks from the washing machine. What's even more alarming is the doctors said they have seen cases where hairs are wrapped around little boys' male anatomy parts. Yikes!
The doctors first tried tweezers, but could not get the hair to loosen so they used a solution to dissolve the hair. Once it was dissolved a little bit, they were able to pull it off with tweezers. Afterward, our daughter's toe was cut pretty bad from the ordeal, but healed up over time.
It's not a bad idea to check your baby's clothing, especially socks when putting them on and also to examine their body when you change diapers. Better to be on the safe side.
Has anything like this happened to you or do you know someone where this has happened? Please comment below and tell us your story.
