That evening began like any other.
My son was eight months old. Our bedtime routine was always the same. I fed him, rocked him in my arms for a while and laid him in his crib, and a few minutes later he would drift off.
But that night was different. He started out just a little cranky, and I assumed he was overtired because he had hardly napped all day.
I picked him up, held him close and began walking slowly around the room.
“Shh, it’s okay, Mommy’s here,” I whispered.
Normally my voice settled him right away. This time he kept crying, and within minutes the crying turned into screaming.
I checked his diaper. It was clean. I offered him milk, but he took a couple of sips and pushed it away. I felt his forehead. No fever. I rubbed his tummy gently, thinking maybe it was gas.
Nothing worked. Every now and then he quieted down for a moment, and then the screaming started all over again.
I could feel panic creeping in.
The hardest part about moments like that is that a baby cannot tell you where it hurts. You just stare at that tiny red face and run through every possible reason in your head.
His tummy? His teeth? Exhaustion? Was he too warm? Too cold?
I even undressed him down to his little T-shirt and diaper so I could check his skin.
His back looked fine. So did his tummy and his arms. I dressed him again and kept rocking him.
Nearly another hour went by. My son’s voice had gone hoarse from crying, and I was close to tears myself.
Finally, I laid him on the bed and decided to start from scratch and check every single inch of him.
That was when something caught my eye.
One of his little legs looked a bit puffier than the other. At first I thought my tired eyes were playing tricks on me.
I gently touched his foot, and he immediately cried even harder. For the first time that night, I looked closely at his foot.
I pulled off his sock and froze. One of his tiny toes was bright red and badly swollen.
Wrapped tightly around it, almost impossible to see, was a long, thin hair. It was mine.
It had tightened so much that it was cutting into his soft skin. It was so fine that at first I could not even tell what I was looking at, because it practically disappeared into the skin.
I felt awful. I had checked him again and again. I had undressed him, felt his tummy and looked at his hands, but it had never crossed my mind to take off his socks.
They were so soft. I never imagined they could be hiding anything that could hurt him.
I tried to unwind the hair, but it was wrapped far too tightly, and I was scared of making it worse. I called my husband right away, and together we carefully freed his toe.
Little by little, my son started to calm down.
He was still sniffling, but that awful, endless crying had finally stopped.
I sat next to him, staring at his small swollen foot, and could not believe that two hours of pain had been caused by one ordinary hair.
Later I found out that this really does happen to babies. A stray hair can end up inside a sock or a piece of clothing, wrap around a toe and slowly get tighter and tighter.
I am sharing my story so other parents know about it too. If your little one is crying and you cannot find the reason, take off the socks and look at every toe.
