Here’s a life lesson many of us probably haven’t heard before: If a baby is inconsolable, check its toes.
That’s the lesson Scott and Jessica Walker learned a couple weeks ago after finding a strand of hair wrapped around their baby’s toe.
Molly’s dad posted a picture of the toe on Facebook and warned fellow parents, saying, “Unfortunately, the hair managed to cut all the way through Molly’s skin, completely around her toe, but it could have been worse had it gone much longer untreated, or if the hair wasn’t accessible.”
It’s called hair-thread tourniquet syndrome, or hair tourniquet, and it usually occurs on appendages in babies. Experts say the classic presentation of the problem is an inconsolable infant.
A doctor told NBC, “If you feel like your child is behaving in a way that’s unusual, pay attention to it. A hair tourniquet is a great thing to check for, and it’s not hard to spot. There’s not really any way to prevent it, but they’re not that hard to remove.”
