Saturday, August 30, 2008

A Hair-Raising Experience?

Tonight while feeding the little one his dinner of sweet potatoes mixed with a little rice cereal, he started crying. Small sobs, at first, then full-on, red-faced shrieks. When he couldn't be distracted by my singing, I knew something wasn't quite right. I wiped him up a bit and took him out of his high-chair. I checked his diaper, and sure enough, he had pooped.

While I was changing him, I noticed something dangling in the back. I tried to wipe it away, but it wouldn't disappear. After a closer inspection, I realized that my son had a strand of hair sticking out of his butt.

Shocked and amused at the same time, I panicked for a few seconds. What was I supposed to do?? This wasn't exactly the kind of thing they write about in those baby books! Baby E was obviously unhappy, so I figured I'd try to pull the strand out. To my dismay, tugging gently on the exposed strand did nothing. Was there a knot stuck up there? Or was Baby E just so tense??

I had to ponder the situation a bit more. I let Baby E roll around the blanket on his bare butt to calm down and I called my brother for support. Surely he must have experienced something similar with his son, right? Nope. He just kept asking how he could he have ingested the hair. (I shed a lot. Despite sweeping and vacuuming regularly, you're gonna find my hair scattered everywhere.)

My choices were: keep trying to pull it out or call 911. (It's Saturday so his pediatrician is out of the office.) I didn't think the situation was dire enough for 911, so once Baby E was somewhat calm, I turned him over and started to tug again. Thankfully, this time the strand of hair kept coming out, and before I knew it, I was holding up a strand of hair approximately the length of my hand.

My husband told me to save it for Baby E's baby book. And no, I have no clue if he was joking or not.

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