Nov 11, 2010
Twin Survival Tip #3: Hair Tourniquets! Ouch!
So maybe this is just a plain ole parenting tip, rather than having to do specifically with twins, but it happened to me yesterday (with one of the twins) and so it’s being grandfathered in with the twin tips.
If your baby is inconsolable and you’ve done everything for them that you can think of, check their fingers and toes to make sure there’s no hair twisted around any of them. (And on boys, check the penis, too.)
This is called a hair tourniquet. It cuts off circulation and is about as uncomfortable as it seems like it would be.
In my case yesterday I was able to remove the hair from Cadence’s finger pretty easily, though the indentation remained for a few minutes, making me check and double-check it multiple times to make sure I’d gotten it all. Scary!
Feel free to share your favorite hair tourniquet stories in the comments!
Oh my. Now that is a tip I would have never thought of : )
Since my three year old is too young to read his story on the internet, I’ll tell it…
Several months ago, S. was grumpy and whiney all afternoon, which is quite atypical. His need to go to the toilet so more frequent than usual, but he fussed and fussed every time he went. His older siblings rotate taking him to potty, but I took a turn to see if I could figure out what was bothering him. I do believe my “holler” for my husband sounded a bit panic-y, and for good reason! We (mostly hubby) managed to get off the hair tourniquet, but it was very unnerving, and we are so thankful we figured out what the problem was in time… how terrible it would have been otherwise!
Molly, this happened to my little brother when he was a baby! His was on his toe. My parents couldn’t get it off, so they ended up taking him to Children’s, where it was successfully removed! I’m happy to report that he is now a healthy, 10-toed, 18 year old Eagle Scout…but he still has a scar on his toe! Needless to say, I’m always watching my baby’s appendages for them!
My two-year old sucks her thumb, and she loves to twist her hair around her index finger while doing so. I have removed more than my share of hair tourniquets. We actually just chopped her hair off to try and break her of this habit; in addition to the danger to her appendages, she was also making herself bald.
oh my! I’ve never heard of such a thing! wow, a mother can never stop watching, can she??
My daughter (at the time she was 20 months) was a hair spinner as she fell asleep. One night about 12:30 she woke up and started crying. I wanted to see if she could fall back asleep, so I let her be, but she kept crying and crying. I finally went in to see what was going on, and she had a hair tourniquet. It was so tight we had to cut her hair just to get her finger away from her head, then take a seam ripper to get the hair off her finger. Very scary!
This happened to my daughter when she was a couple months old. She was very fussy & no wonder…while changing her I saw her baby toe was all red & swollen. One of my hairs was wrapped so tightly around it…poor thing. Using tweezers & after alot of crying we finally removed it…it was a little scary!
I was babysitting my 3 nieces and discovered the youngest (1-2 months old) had a hair wrapped around her toe and it was cutting off her circulation. I called my sister to come home from her date night with her husband to look at it. She was stunned at my request — “really because of a hair?!” but came home anyway. With careful examination and helpful hints from a friend who was a nurse, she managed to get the hair off the toe and then went back to her husband. The next day the toe still looked much the same so off to the pediatrician to make sure there was no more hair (thankfully, not – just residual effects). The doc said that it was very common and even a question on his national board exam.
This happened to us once, with a silly band! I read once you need to be careful, because they’ll cut off your child’s circulation — but my daughter got to bed with one on her ankle we didn’t know about. Next think we know she woke up crying her leg hurt and it had cut off the circulation to her foot — SO scary.
Wow…never heard of this…one more reason I like my short hair…but I am going to pass the info on to my long-haired sister!
I have never heard of this either. Wow, so good to know!
I had 5 children without ever even hearing about such a thing, and then when baby number 6 was 2 months old, I thought she was going to lose a toe! It was scary, it was wound around so much and so tight that Urgent Care sent us to the ER, where she had 2 incisions on the sides of her toe, so they could make sure they completely severed the hairs, as the swelling was so bad they couldn’t be sure they were seeing it all… and it took several days before it started to look normal- so scary!
I’ve been paranoid about lose hairs ever since!
When we told our friends and family what had happened, none of them had ever heard of it either… but when we were at the ER (at Unity Hospital), we were the 4th or 5th one in that ER THAT WEEK! Crazy, huh?!
That is so CRAZY! I remember reading about it in a parenting book once, and I thought, ‘Seriously??? I can’t imagine that that problem could be common enough to warrant a shout out in a parenting book!’ I guess I was wrong! I’m glad to hear from the stories that the outcome is usually a happy one!
One trick I’ve heard of is using Nair (Sensitive Skin Formula) to remove the hair tourniquet. Of course it would be important to be careful with the Nair, but in a pinch (no pun intended) it just melts the hair away. Sometimes that works better than pulling the hair with a tweezers, which may tighten the tourniquet. I hope you never have to deal with this again, Molly! How scary!
Read this yesterday, and am still cringing. Ow. My three kids are all old enough to communicate/figure this out for themselves. I never would have thought of this.
This is crazy, but my daughter actually did this when she was around 5 or 6yrs old. Only her tourniquet was around a tastebud! No kidding. The silly girl chewed her hair and lassoed a tastebud one day. It was very traumatic as she couldn’t get it off and came down from bed to get some help. I had never heard of such a thing. She’s 17 now and fully recovered. :-) By the way, your blog is very encouraging.
Oh my. Happened to us tonight with my 5 year old. We couldn’t even see it was a hair until he got out of the bath and we closely examined. Fortunately he was able to tell us it was bothering him. Hair wrapped around the tip of hos penis but rght under the tip so you couldn’t see it. When we realized it was a hair and that the tip of his penis looked a little blue we freaked out. We were going to go to the er but incalled my neighbor who is a doctor. She was able to remove it bit only because she had special siccors to snip it without pulling it. We never in a million years could have done it without seriously hurting him. We feel grateful we saw it when we did before any per,innate damage. This was serious and scary.
Yep, this happen to us just today. We had heard about this before, but never thought it could happen to us. Horrible experience! Baby had been fussier that usual for the past few days…..got worse today. I noticed his toe was red. The hair had cut deep into his skin and was cutting off his circulation. It was wraped around two toes and we were able to cut it off between the toes. Took him to the Hospital had it checked out. The doctor said he would be fine and prescribed topical antibiotic (neosporin)