Chris's first trip to the ER

Oh, you're excited to read this one right? Well, it's strange. I'll just start by saying that.

A few Saturdays ago, Chris was rather fussy. We weren't sure why. All day long, we had some pretty long crying periods and we felt awful not knowing how to fix it. That night, around 10, Jed was holding Chris and looking at his adorable feet and toes (because seriously, baby toes are so cute!) and noticed a long, blond hair wrapped around his middle toe and "ring finger" toe. Weird! So, I pulled it off the ring finger toe. Difficult, but I did it. Then I tried to pull it off the middle toe. Let me tell you, it was in there. Deep. We couldn't see the hair, but we could see the massive roll/indent/line where the hair was digging in. We felt awful and Chris hated us touching his toe because I have no doubt it hurt quite a bit. I tried to use some of my little tweezers or nail things to get it out, but it was too far in there.

It's hard to tell because it looks like a little roll or toe wrinkle, but you can see on his middle toe that line where the hairs are digging in.

We wondered what to do. We kept mentioning the ER but both of us felt so silly going there for a hair! Doctor's office was closed. Urgent Cares were closed. ER was open. So, after much deliberation, we went there. When I told the nurse who checked us in what the problem was, I felt so silly, but she was so nice about it and made me feel lots better. She also told us that hairs wrapping around fingers and toes is more common than you might think. Apparently, though, it happens most often with boys in another place..... ouch!

Amazingly, Chris is not crying. That's because no one was touching his toes.

So, we were taken back to the ER and into a room and a super nice doctor and technician came in to help us out. They were a little baffled as to how to get it off, because it was way in there, but after using a couple of different tools, they used a suture remover and it worked! Thank goodness. And we felt even better about bringing him in because the doctors were so surprised that we even saw it and told us that if we hadn't, and it had continued to cut in so deep, he might have needed his toe amputated. Scary! But we are so grateful we saw it. Now, when he cries his sad little cry of pain, we check every toe and finger and elsewhere to make sure there's no long blond hair of mine wrapped around him!

All this means, our first ever trip to the ER is complete and no worries for the next one! Let's just hope there is no next one.