When my twins were born 3 1/2 years ago, the hip baby gift was a blankie. I’m pretty sure we received 6 or 7 sets of super soft chenille blankies. Seemed a little much, but I kept all of them just in case we needed back-ups. So glad I did because we are now down to one! However, recently, we had a crazy thing happen to Owen in the middle of the night and it involved his beloved green blankie (see photo).
While I was out of town on one of my girls weekends this spring (still feeling guilty!), Randy woke to a really scary situation. He heard one of the twins crying and he went upstairs thinking it was just a bad dream. He found Owen sitting up in his bed crying about his finger. It was dark and Randy didn’t think much of it until he turned on the light. Upon closer inspection, Randy found Owen’s pinky finger completely black and entangled in his green blankie. This scared the tar out of Randy and he almost called 911. He rushed Owen downstairs and cut the string and immediately massaged the finger to get the circulation going. This eventually worked but Randy really felt Owen was on the cusp of losing his finger.
Here is the craziest part of the story. I was with a group of moms on a girls weekend and I told them what happened. When one of the girls came home on Sunday, her daughter was napping. That very day, her daughter also awoke with her finger entangled in her blankie, certainly not to the extent that Owen’s was, but enough to wake her up and cry out for mommy. I can’t decide if there is a flaw in this certain brand of blankie or if I was just a negligent mommy for not paying attention to the dangling strings on the trim of the blankie. Our other twin took to a different brand, has had it and loved on it dearly for the same length of time and there are no dangling threads anywhere. Maybe the one Owen liked was just too soft and fragile. Regardless, we tossed those blankies cold turkey! He now sleeps with my favorite toddler bed-size blanket, the NAP blanket by Brookstone. Very safe for the time-being!
Have any of you had this happen? I guess my advice to everyone is just be smart and be aware of every single thing that goes to bed with your children. Every thread can potentially be dangerous.
5 comments
Wow! That is crazy – is his finger ok??? Great blog! I never would have suspected any hazards with those blankies. We too received a ton as baby gifts but our kids never seemed to get attached to them. I keep the monogrammed ones (and the ones that have stuffed animals attached to it) out for show 🙂
Anything that can get around a finger/toe can be a hazard, I have a friend at work whose child woke one night crying about her toe, she had been sleeping with socks on and then they pulled it off they found a hair that had gotten wrapped around her toe and was cutting off circulation, just need to be on the look out for anthing that can get wrapped around a digit.
This happened to my daughter too. All my children have special, hand-made crocheted blankets. And, they all stick their fingers through the holes and finger their blankets for comfort. My daughter is the only one that got her blankie so wrapped around one of her fingers that she was in tears and needed help getting it off. It was very scary because it happened in the middle of the night and it was only by the grace of God that I even knew what had happened!
My twins love their blankies too!! Thank you for the head up!
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