About a month ago, Marlowe woke up in the middle of the night fussing.  This was not at all out of the ordinary, since she has been teething and can get uncomfortable at nighttime.  It’s my general motto not to go in there unless she really seems desperate, and even when I do go in I try to keep the time to a minimum.   I’m not crazy about her getting too “used to” hang time with Mama at 3am.  This particular night, her fussing began to escalate over about five minutes until it was clear that something was wrong.  She was rolling all around her crib and really screaming.  I went in to her room, keeping the lights dim as I usually do so as not to completely take her out of her sleepy place.  From the moment I held her in my arms and sat in the glider, however, it was clear that she was not soothed.  She was arching her back, screaming and trying to buck out of my arms.  I tried standing up and bouncing her, sitting, even bringing her in to the hallway but nothing was working.  I was starting to get a little freaked out because she had become pretty hysterical, and is never usually so difficult to soothe.  At this point, Kyle was awake as well.  He brought it some teething medicine, which I gave her, and went downstairs to make an “emergency” bottle of milk.  When it arrived she drank it immediately but as soon as it was finished she continued to scream.  Around this time, I changed her position in my arms and suddenly felt a little tickle on my finger as her arm brushed by me.  It felt as if there was something coming out of her hand that was very thin and soft but the lights were so low that I couldn’t see.  All of a sudden it hit me, and I yelled for Kyle to turn all the lights on.  When he did, I was absolutely horrified.  My daughter’s wrist and neck were so red that they were starting to become purple.  She had the string from an entire satin Lovey tag wrapped about fifteen times around one wrist and across her throat.  It was cutting in to her so deeply that her skin was swollen and discolored.  Because the string was so fine and strong, it had embedded itself even more! I had felt the end of the piece of string against my finger.  Clearly the tag had become frayed, and unraveled as she cuddled, touched, and handled the blanket, and she had gotten tangled in it.   I ripped the string off, and held her close to me.  I was crying at that point too, I felt so badly for her and so angry that it had happened.  Luckily she is fine, but I cut all the tags off of the rest of her blankets that night.  I was so surprised that these blankets don’t come with warnings on the tags.  PLEASE remove all of your tags– don’t let this crazy freak experience happen to your babies!

Side note:  Marlowe uses Angel Dear lovey blankets.  I have written them a letter asking to remove their tags for this reason!

xoxo
EAM