When my daughter was only two months old, I was giving her a bath after her morning nap. As I was cleaning her little feet, I discovered that two of her toes were discolored and swollen. Looking closer, I realized that they seemed to be pinched in a the base, although I could not see what caused this. They looked like little tiny sausages the way they were all pinched in. I honestly thought her itty bitty toes were going to literally fall off in my hand!

After a very anxious trip to the emergency room, we found that hair in her blanket sleeper had wrapped itself around her toes and cut off the circulation. I began to cry, feeling guilty and thinking I must be a terrible mother to have not noticed this happening. The doctor told me not to feel bad as it can take as little as five minutes for this to happen. I completely freaked out on the doctors when I found that this is a common occurrence with infants. Later when I had my son the post-natal care videos did cover this possibility, but at the time I was incredibly angry that no one had warned me of this situation.

We spent several days going back and forth to the doctor's office making sure that gangrene did not set in and then 7 months waiting to see if Tabitha would learn to walk okay. Thankfully, she cut this period short by skipping right over crawling and going straight to walking at 9 months old. She is 19 years old now and still bears the scars from this on the last two toes of her left foot and she still has some loss of sensation in them. Never again have I put anything over a baby's foot that I did not completely check for stray hairs or loose threads.

Learn more about this author, Tina Golden.
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