Lesson Learnt

Emily was born with lots of black hair. Whenever anyone met her, their first comment was always "Oh wow, so much hair!" Then it thinned out, as newborn hair does, and she had a semi-bald phase, which was later replaced by beautiful brown hair. Lately her hair has thickened and grown. It's almost like she has suddenly developed an explosion of hair.

Because there's always been so much of it (relatively speaking, even during the semi-bald stage!), sometime during the summer I purchased some really lovely hairclips from an online boutique called Daisy Dots.

They looked so pretty holding her hair off her face and I loved the fact that she didn't ever realise they were there, meaning it felt a little bit safer to put them on for her. Despite this, I'd never leave her alone wearing one. If we were going somewhere, for example in the car, I'd remove it as I knew that if she were to find it and begin experimenting, I'd never be able to get to her in time to stop her from swallowing it. What would happen though was that I'd never remember to put the hairclip back on once we got to our destination so technically, we never really used them and I stopped bothering.

When she was unwell last week, with mucus almost constantly streaming down her face (and she was also teething so there was a huge amount of saliva too - yes, it was a lovely picture, poor child), her long hair would inevitably end up caked to her face. So one day, I brought out the hairclips again and problem solved.

What didn't occur to me was that in the few weeks since I'd last used the hairclips, she has become so much more aware of things, she now knew that there was *something* on her head and she chose exactly the point when I turned my back to wash some dishes, entirely oblivious to the fact that there may be danger lurking, to investigate.

Of course, I had my eye on her and as usual, she was chewing on her fingers with huge amounts of dribble pouring out of her mouth. And then I realised that the clip was no longer on her head and nowhere to be seen. No, it was entirely inside her mouth.

I fished it out (appalled look from her!) and all was well. Now, I'm not a very overprotective parent. She's crawling but I haven't baby-proofed the house to an extent that many might. I believe that different babies will gravitate towards different dangers so I am working on a "play it by ear" basis. And I am in no way shaming Daisy Dots Boutique (they include a safety statement too), but let's just say that at this point, if it were a choice between hairclips - as absolutely adorable they may be - and Emily's hair being all over the place (I don't really like headbands and they wouldn't last a minute anyway!), I'm going for the latter!

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