First Injury Trip to the Doctor

Well, I have been a mom for almost 3 years, and Wednesday, I had to make my first trip to the doctor for an injury... for Norah. Definitely figured Wesley would be the one to make me do this. Norah had what I learned is called a hair tourniquet on her toe. Yeah, I definitely didn't know that was a medical term. I picked up Norah and Wes on Wednesday, and Jamie told me Norah's toe looked weird. This is what I saw:

As soon as I saw it, I remembered a conversation I had with a nurse when I called about Wesley screaming and screaming with no cause (turned out that this was his first ear infection), and she asked me to make sure there wasn't hair wrapped around his fingers, toes, or penis. I forgot about that conversation until I saw her toe. I googled "Hair wrapped around Baby toe" to get some tips for getting it off because it was too tight and we couldn't really even see that it was for sure a hair. I saw several pics and stories that scared me, so I called the peds office. They asked me to bring her in ASAP and said that I had time to come to Ames from Boone as long as it wasn't blue or black (yikes!).

I got the kids packed up and called Nick to have him meet me there. I think he thought I was a little crazy taking Norah to the doctor for a hair wrapped around her toe! But he agreed and met us there.

We saw a different doctor than Dr. Nau. He cut the hair off the toe the best he could with these tiny surgical tweezer things, and asked us to keep this warm pack on her foot for 15 minutes. Norah screamed like I have never seen/heard when he was cutting it off... a combination of the pressure and that her toe got cut I am sure. Once he left, I fed her and she calmed down and was happy until he came back.

The circulation still didn't look great (I guess babies have lost toes and fingers from this!!), so he looked at it a little more to make sure the hair was gone and cut a little more before he was sure it was gone. Norah cried and cried again. I had to hold her arms down and the nurse held down her other foot. She looked at me like "Why are you letting them do this, mom?!" When he was done, the nurse and doctor cleaned her foot and wrapped it up. We were then given the instructions to put a heating pad on her foot for 20 min on, 20 min off, then 20 min on again when we got home and to bring her back tomorrow to make sure it was all healed. 

 The next morning, it still looked bad to me:

 Nick took her to the doctor (I wanted to go but it was the first day of the semester, so I had new students and felt like I couldn't miss). He said circulation looked good. We have to put Neosporin on it every day twice a day for the next 2 weeks and keep it CLEAN. Skin was broken from the hair and from getting the hair off.

 Clearly- Norah is doing just fine now:

I guess hair tourniquets are most common on toes and fingers when babies are 3-4 months old. This is when moms are losing lots of hair. This quite often ends up with trips to the emergency room! No one has been able to explain how hairs gets wrapped around and so tight, but it is something I will be looking for now! We are not sure how long the hair was on Norah's toe. She had a bath the morning before when I am sure I would have noticed it, but whether it was on there when I dressed her that morning I just don't know. Jamie noticed because she trimmed Norah's finger nails and decided (LUCKILY!) to check her toenails, too! I am so glad we found it before any real damage was done. The doctor said her toe could look funny for the next 2-3 weeks.