Mum urges parents to check their baby's toes after hair 'cut off blood supply'
Keeping young children safe can sometimes feel like a minefield, and now one mum is urging other parents to check their baby's toes.
Chelsi McGuire took to Facebook to share the important warning and revealed that a stray hair wrapped around her son's toe 'cut off the blood supply'.
This comes after another mum shared a warning about a common choking hazard for infants:
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The concerned mum, from Preston, Lancashire, wrote: "CHECK YOUR KIDS' TOES!"
She explained: "I've ALWAYS checked Jonah's babygrows and I ALWAYS check his toes! I took his babygrow off this afternoon to change his bum and he had a hair wrapped around his toe."
Chelsi revealed that this seemingly innocuous problem actually cut off her son's blood supply and cut into his toe, eventually getting to the point where the hair was 'in' the child's toe.
"He had no signs until I touched it," the concerned mum explained. "He was happy and fine. I'm so glad it managed to come off."
Horrifyingly, Chelsi isn't the only mum who has issued this warning, so too did Sara Ward from Missouri, who also took to Facebook earlier this year after her child suffered a similar problem.
She wrote that when her son had a strand of hair around his toe, his circulation was cut off to the point where he had to be taken to hospital.
The mum explained that it all began with a 'line going across [his] toe and some redness' and things eventually escalated to the point where he had to be hospitalised because 'circulation was not improving and there was a risk of losing his toe.'
"He had a total of 12 Nurse Practitioners, Pediatricians and Surgeons look at it and they tried to find the hair with tweezers, scalpels, magnifying goggles and special lights," Ward wrote.
"They tried Nair to break down the hair and they booked an OR for surgery to try and remove it under anesthesia."
Thankfully, 'at the last minute' the baby was able to avoid having surgery.
His mum continued that while her son's story was an 'extreme' case, it illustrates the importance of parents checking their children's toes.
While Chelsi was able to easily remove the hair from her baby's toe, this unfortunately wasn't possible for Logan because it had become so tightly wrapped, 'swelling and constricting the area'.
"The skin starts to form over the hair and it gets imbedded so deep into the tissues," she explained. "It makes it impossible to see. Plus add in a screaming, kicking baby and it makes it 10x more difficult."
WebMD reports that the condition is known as 'hair tourniquet syndrome' and it happens when hair is wrapped 'tightly around a body part such as the fingers, toe, or genitals.'
While it can happen to anyone, it is most common in babies and toddlers.
Emma Guinness