A Missouri mother is warning parents to be aware of hair strands wrapping around babies’ toes and cutting off their circulation.
Babies can get in just about anything, and parents always have to be on their toes watching over their little ones. A Missouri mother was in the shock of her life when she realized her 5-month-old baby was getting their circulation cut off from their toe by a strand of hair.
Last month, 33-yer-old Sara Ward noticed a line going across the middle of her infant son’s right foot. At the time, it didn’t seem to be anything severe. “It wasn’t looking alarming at that point and we figured maybe it had just got a little bit irritated by something,” the mom recalled in an interview,” said Ward. However, after a few days passed, she noticed the baby’s toe had swollen up and turned purple. That’s when they immediately rushed him to their pediatrician.
It turned out to be a syndrome called hair tourniquet, which is a “rare clinical phenomenon that involves hair, thread, or similar material becoming so tightly wrapped around an appendage that it results in injury,” the New York Post reports.
The strand of hair got so tightly wrapped that the doctors were worried they’d have to resort to surgery. They spent a good 40 minutes or so trying to get the hair and they had all these different tools that they were using — tweezers, magnifying goggles and special lights,” Ward explained, according to the New York Post. “The toe was very painful for my son so he was crying and kicking and couldn’t keep still as they were trying to get a better look at it.” She added, “They tried hair removal cream to try and break down the hair pieces and some numbing cream to get deeper with tweezers.”
After successfully removing the strand, the boy was kept overnight, and his toe eventually returned back to normal. After sharing her story, her posts were lit up with thousands of responses and similar explaining experiences. “We have a furry cat, and man, the amount of fur that gets wrapped around our little one’s fingers and toes are insane,” one user wrote, per the New York Post.
The strand of hair that was wrapped around Logan’s toe was so thin that doctors were worried they could not remove it without surgery.
“They spent a good 40 minutes or so trying to get the hair and they had all these different tools that they were using — tweezers, magnifying goggles and special lights,” Ward recalled. “The toe was very painful for my son so he was crying and kicking and couldn’t keep still as they were trying to get a better look at it.”
The rattled mom continued: “They tried hair removal cream to try and break down the hair pieces and some numbing cream to get deeper with tweezers.”
Doctors decided to keep Logan in the hospital overnight to monitor the toe and make sure the hair had been properly removed and that his circulation was restored.
The following day, Ward and her partner were relieved that the tot’s toe had returned to a healthy pink color. They were able to be discharged without Logan having to undergo surgery.
However, she and other perturbed parents are determined to raise awareness about the dangers of hair tourniquet syndrome, so other moms and dads don’t have to go through the same drama.
Registered nurse and postpartum care expert Karrie Lochner recently shared a message about what parents can do to prevent the issue.
“I think it’s great to do a quick ‘once-over’ on your baby with each diaper change,” she wrote. “Undress them, rub your thumb along their fingers and toes, also taking a close look at their genitals (yep, even girls!).
“When these are seen, they need to be removed immediately,” she added, mentioning in her stories that parents can use hair removal cream such as Nair or nail scissors to release the tourniquet. “If the hair is embedded deeply into the appendage, and unable to be removed by the parents at home, please take baby to the hospital ASAP.
“A lot of people think ‘It’s just a piece of hair, how can you not see it and get it?’ but it’s really difficult with the swelling and the skin starts to kind of form over the hair,” Ward explained. “Now I’m always checking his toes and fingers now and making sure that I’m not seeing any hairs getting wrapped around them.
The incident took place just before the popular parenting page @tinyheartseducation warned of the syndrome on Instagram.
“While hair tourniquets are rare, they require quick recognition and treatment to prevent long-term damage to the body part,” the account’s owners wrote beneath a shocking social media post.
“They’re most commonly seen on infants and toddlers due to their inability to tell us what is going on and where they have pain. Infants who are less than 4 months old are most at risk because 90% of mamas experience postpartum hair loss.”
The post garnered thousands of likes, with multiple moms flocking to the comments section to claim their kids had been victims of hair tourniquet syndrome.
“We have a furry cat and man the amount of fur that gets wrapped around our little one’s fingers and toes are insane,” one user wrote.