Mom Warns Parents to Check Baby's Toes When Son Lands in ER & Nearly Has His Amputated
On Christmas Day 2017, a 34-year-old mother named Heather Fricke shared a graphic warning to parents everywhere after her 10-week-old son Jacob ended up in the emergency room.
This is definitely not how anyone wants to spend their holiday. But for this family, they’re just grateful their son is okay after the scare they had following his nap.
According to Fricke, her baby doesn’t cry much, so nothing seemed out of the ordinary at first.
Jacob had just finished a two-hour nap when she and her husband went to get him.
She changed his diaper and clothes. But it wasn’t until she handed the 10-week-old to her husband, Tommy, so she could put on his socks that she noticed little Jacob’s toes.
They were blue. And tied together.
She quickly noticed it was hair that was actually binding his tiny toes and she tried to remove it as best she could, but was unable to get it all. That’s when they took him to the emergency room.
“…we spent an hour and a team of 5 doctors trying to get rest of MY HAIR off his two toes..” Fricke stated in her post on Facebook.
“doctors said if I didn’t take off the hair that I was able to get off that his 2 toes would’ve had to be amputated…” she continued.
Her post, featuring a photo of Jacob’s toes 12 hours after the hair was removed, has now been shared over 240,000 times.
“CHECK YOUR BABYS TOES AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN!!!” the distressed mother warned.
Thankfully, most of the people who’ve commented on the post have been entirely understanding.
Many have even sharing similar stories, instead of shaming the mother for letting this happen.
I truly appreciate when other parents take the time to share stories like this. Checking a baby’s toes isn’t the first thing on your mind when you’re a stressed and overly-tired parent of a newborn.
As for the Fricke family, Jacob is now home and doing well. He’s in slight pain as his toes continue to recover — but that’s a small price to pay for a situation that could have been much worse if his mother hadn’t responded so quickly.
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