Christmas is just around the corner, and we’re sure a lot of you already have your houses decorated and your Christmas trees up. As beautiful as these may be, the ornaments from your tree can also serve as a threat to young children and their curious hands.
Though this story DID NOT take place in Manila, allow us to share it anyway as a warning to all parents out there. Christmas ornaments may be small itself or may contain small and easily detachable parts, make sure to keep these out of children’s reach to prevent a holiday disaster. Check out this warning from Katie C.
“It’s getting to be that time of year again, so I wanted to put out a warning for everyone. In 2010 my daughter (17 months at the time) was playing on the floor with her daddy, he got up and walked across the room and in that time she got an ornament off the tree and put the hook into her mouth. She started to cough so my husband went over to see what was wrong (it wasn’t the same kind of cough you hear when a baby is gagging on food or something like that) he put his finger in her mouth to take whatever was out and she swallowed it. He looked and saw that the ornament no longer had a hook and immediately knew something wasn’t right. He brought her up to me and she was acting totally normal, but since we couldn’t find the hook we thought we’d play it safe and take her to the hospital for a quick x-ray and “waste the doctors time” (as we thought at the time) They found this. She was then transferred to Childrens Hospital where she was put to sleep and it was removed by a scope down her throat. She was totally fine and playing the whole time, and she was up at 7 am the next day (even though her surgery was at midnight and we didn’t get home till 2 am) playing and acting as if nothing happened. I just don’t want anyone to have to go through this!! Please change your hooks to string, and watch for little bells, tinsel and batteries (which could kill from the acid in their stomachs opening them and exposing the battery acid in just minutes) This applies to animals too!! Merry Christmas and thanks for reading! This post is public! Please share!!“
Make sure to share this and warn other parents. If your ornaments use hooks or other small parts, you can also just remove the hook and replace it with a piece of thread. None the less, keep small parts away from children.
How do you feel about this post? Got other things you feel parents need to remember to keep their kids safe this holiday season?
