Hello moms and dads of hive!
Have you ever been so afraid of what would have happened that you make rule never to give a chance at the possibility of having such experience.
OK, I'll explain why I asked this question. Some months back, I had bought some colorful hair ribbon to beautify my baby's fast growing hair. Before that time, I would basically just comb her kinky baby hair and leave it in afro style. I would trim out of it when it grew too full. However her father wanted it styled rather than trimmed. According to him, combing it was hurtful. I always fight the urge to roll my eyes because our baby seem not to care, which to me meant it was not painful since she's not crying.
On this day, I decided to finally make her hair with the colorful ribbon I bought. Given, it was cute on her and it gave her a new and sharp look. Everybody that saw it loved it. I had a scary experience with it.
I had to pick some stuffs at the super market that faithful day and so I strapped her to my back African style. This meant I would have my eyes on her since she was on my back.
By the way, backing a baby African style is very good for both mother and baby. For mothers, it let her get things done since babies love to be in that position. They would remain there without complaining while she worked with her free hands.
For babies, it was 'babying' time for them. I guess the warm cosy feel of a mother's back gives them so much relaxed feeling that they always fall asleep 100% of the time.
According to my mom, backing a newborn African style helps her belly button heal faster. This reminds me of when my baby's umbilical cord took almost a month to fall out. She would argue that its because I refused to strap her to my back since I was using a baby carrier. So yeah, mothers' back is that therapeutic and good for the baby. Not to mention the fact that it helped them to regulate body temperature if you allow skin to skin.
That aside and back to our story. So, with her on my back in that position, I couldn't monitor her. Somehow I notice her abrupt silence. Call it mother's instinct or sheer carefulness. Well my baby was choking on her ribbon. She had a mouthful of ribbon and was struggling between swallowing it or spitting it out. She simply was choking!
How did that happen you might want to ask? Little Miss Sunshine happened to have reached for the ribbon on her hair and placed it in her mouth. This were days when she was in the habit of pulling on her hair and putting just about anything in her mouth. Days when she would pull her socks from her little baby leg and place it in the mouth for the chew.
It was a very scary experience for me. I couldn't help but shiver from what would have been if I had not checked on her or if I was too distracted to act on what my instinct was telling me.
This happened when she was around 6months of age. At 11months, a lot has changed. She has grown to reduce placing random things in her mouth. Plus she's African, she can't afford to always leave her hair undone she'll just look unkempt most of the time. So rather than having her hair sectioned into nine or ten places with ribbons, I simply just put it in three big buns these days. This way I can monitor the number of ribbons on her hair while having her get use to having her hair done without eating up the ribbon.
Thanks for reading.