Mom Spots String Growing Out of Baby’s Face, Doctors Were Shocked To Find This…
A parent’s highest priority is to protect their children always. No matter how old they get, they will always worry about them and try to protect them from anything that could harm them. However, there are times when even the most cautious parents in the world cannot protect their children from pain because even those things that we think are harmless one day, without knowing how, can become a death threat.
Aaron and Emma Whittington were good parents, or at least they tried their best. Their married life was as normal as any other couple their age. They were both 35 and had been dating since high school. Their relationship had had multiple ups and downs, as is to be expected in such a long-term relationship, but no problem was serious enough to break them apart. Aaron was a high school music teacher, although in recent years he’d also been a freelance video game soundtrack composer and was doing very well. Emma, on the other hand, was in finance and worked at a bank branch near their home. They were a traditional couple brought up according to the Christian values their parents had instilled in them, but they adapted to modern times. They were good people, of that no one has the slightest doubt, and there was nothing they wanted to be more in the world than parents.
After getting married when they were only 24, they decided to wait a few years to expand their family as they were very young and didn’t yet feel ready for the great challenge of parenthood. A fear that, as they grew older and lived new experiences together, dissipated and gave way to the dream of becoming parents and forming a big family.
“I don’t want to wait any longer, honey. We’re starting to get older and I’m afraid I won’t have the time I need to start a family. I must admit that I’m terrified and full of insecurities, but who isn’t? I have to be brave for us and for the family we want. I know I want to be a mother with you, that’s all I need to know,” Mrs. Whittington confessed to her husband one evening as they dressed for a dinner party with her in-laws.
Family pressure from her parents and her husband’s parents had long made Emma feel unable to take the step of becoming a mother. She felt that she would never be able to live up to the high expectations they had of her and her husband, as she had grown up in a large family, being the youngest of six siblings and the daughter of a successful married couple who struggled to raise them from a very young age.
“You’ll do well, Emma, no matter what doubts you have, because I’ll always be by your side to help you resolve them. Just as I know that you will calm all my fears and insecurities. Nobody knows how to be a good parent; it’s an adventure that each person must live in their own way, and I can’t wait to do it with you,” consulted her husband, who was just as scared as she was at the idea of being a father at almost 35 years old.
They both already had good jobs that allowed them to live in a nice house in one of the best neighborhoods in Kansas and lead a life full of comforts. It was the perfect time to become parents, and just a few months after they started trying, the most awaited news arrived.
“Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Whittington, you’re expecting a baby girl,” the family doctor told him in the third month of pregnancy while performing an ultrasound. “You can rest assured, the baby’s growing on schedule and her heart’s beating strongly. In just a few months, you’ll be able to hold your little girl,” the doctor hastened to explain, seeing Emma’s worried face, who kept looking in amazement at the monitor where her baby was slowly moving.
Emma had an easy pregnancy and gave birth to her daughter during the early morning hours of August 4th, 2022, a beautiful golden-haired, blue-eyed baby girl they’d named Mia. And it was at that very moment when she held her baby in her arms for the first time that all the doubts and fears which Emma had accumulated through the years and all her pregnancy vanished. She could only feel happiness, and when she looked at her daughter, she felt capable of anything. She never felt anything like it before.
But while the Whittingtons’ first moments as parents were sweet, the first few months of Mia’s life were not without drama and the occasional trip to the hospital. Emma and her husband would panic at the drop of a hat, and as soon as they felt panic set in and thought that child was sick, they would rush her to the hospital. Most of the time, however, all these emergencies turned out to be nothing more than little scares typical of first-time parents who read too many parenting books and emergency protocols for newborns.
“They should relax and try to get some more rest. Little Mia is fine. It’s normal for babies to cry and suffer from colic during the first months of life. Almost all babies suffer from them, and I assure you they don’t pose any risk to the child’s health. As they come, they’ll go away. You just have to be patient and wait for her body to get stronger. Now go home and try to get some rest while Mia is asleep, okay? Relax, you’re doing great,” Mia’s pediatrician explained, trying to lighten the mood when, for the third time in less than two weeks, the couple went to the emergency room because Mia wouldn’t stop crying at night at the top of her lungs.
The couple returned home exhausted as they’d been unable to sleep for two weeks in a row due to the baby’s colic. That day, they managed to sleep for more than an hour at a time, and after the conversation with the doctor, they decided to take it all a little easier.
“We have to rest now, honey. We can’t think that the child’s in danger all the time. In the end, we’re the ones who’ll get sick, and if we’re not well, who will take care of her? You understand, don’t you?” Aaron told his wife in the days following his last visit to the emergency room. The man was exhausted and his eyes were swollen from not being able to sleep.
“I understand you, Aaron. I’ll try to relax, I promise. I can’t help being worried. I see her so small and helpless that I think anything can hurt her. It’s not healthy for us to be so worried though, you’re right. We should rest more for our sake and hers,” Emma was as tired as her husband, and although she felt really guilty for feeling like this, she needed to pace herself more or she’d end up getting sick.
Unfortunately, it was precisely during the weeks in which the couple tried to take it all in stride when what they feared most happened. Mia suffered a strange infection and needed to be admitted to the hospital urgently. It all happened one morning while Emma was changing her daughter’s diaper. Noticing that the girl’s jaw was swollen as she moved her, she approached to check. The mother was horrified to see that her baby, only seven months old, had a large lump protruding from under her jaw.
“Aaron, there’s something wrong with the baby! Something serious this time, it’s not my imagination! We got to take her to the hospital right away!” Emma shouted to her husband as she took her child in her arms and clumsily tried to prepare her bag. She was hysterical and had started crying, fearing the worst.
They rushed their daughter to Hutchinson Kansas Regional Medical Center, where emergency physicians examined her and determined it was an inflamed gland caused by bacteria. Doctors administered an antibiotic to treat the suspected infection, and after two hours of observation and testing, the family was sent home. The next day, the swelling seemed to have subsided and Mia didn’t seem to be unwell, so the Whittingtons relaxed and waited for the treatment to take effect.
Unfortunately, it didn’t. A week after the first admission, Mia’s grandmother, Mrs. Megan Whittington, who cared for the girl one day a week, saw that the swelling had worsened again and took her back to the hospital after a pimple appeared in the inflamed area, which had now grown to the size of a golf ball and a half.
“It looks like Quasimodo. You’ll understand why I’m worried. I don’t think that what my granddaughter has developed is normal. Please investigate thoroughly what the cause is,” said her grandmother to the doctors, very upset after seeing the state the girl was in.
Upon further examination of the swollen area, the attending physician suspected a staph infection in the lymph nodes and decided to break up the pimple to try and drain it and bring down the swelling. He then drew small marks on Mia’s face to measure if the swelling increased again and continued with intravenous antibiotics. They decided to keep the baby in the hospital out of concern and to see if the inflammation would disappear completely.
After two days of treatment, the inflammation seemed completely under control, and where there was once a pimple, a small scab had now formed and was healing at a good pace. The doctor on duty scraped it off a bit and left it to continue his rounds with other patients. However, when the doctor left and left the Whittingtons alone with their daughter, they noticed something they would never forget: a thin black thread or stick had begun to sprout from the scab.
The couple couldn’t believe their eyes and quickly called a pediatrician to examine it. The doctor came as quickly as she could, and when she examined the child closely, she didn’t know what it was either. Then she put on a pair of gloves and gently tugged on the end of the protruding black thread. No one could have expected what was going to come out of it. The doctor had plucked a black feather, approximately five centimeters long, from the swollen area of the girl’s neck.
“A feather? What is a feather doing inside my daughter’s neck?” cried Emma Whittington in horror. “How could this happen? I don’t understand!”
None of the people present could give her an answer. Everyone was as shocked as she was. After the initial fright, the doctors reassured the parents and explained that the baby probably swallowed or inhaled the feather, and that the feather apparently went through the inside of her cheek or throat and then, over time, her body expelled it out the other side.
“Do you know if the child could have been in contact with something containing feathers? Maybe a cushion, stuffed animal? There are many things that contain feathers and we’re not aware of it,” said the doctor trying to reassure the parents.
And that’s what Emma remembered. Three months ago, they changed all the cushions in the house, replacing the synthetic fiber ones with more expensive feather ones.
“We had been banging on the sofa cushion for weeks,” said Emma, horrified when she realized what had happened. “But I suspected she was doing it because of teething or an ear infection. I never thought she’d get a feather in her jaw. If I’d known, I would have never bought those cushions. My God, it’s my fault!” the young mother lamented as she realized that it had all been a terrible accident that she could have prevented.
In the 20 years she’d been working on the hospital’s pediatric ward, Dr. Sandra Mattis had never seen anything like it, although she recalled that a child once came with the bristles of a hairbrush stuck in her tonsils and had to have them removed for chewing on a toothbrush. The doctor told him that the inflammation had to be causing immense pain, but Mia only cried when the nurses poked her. No one could explain it to her.
“But it’ll be fine, right? Will there be any lasting effects? Tell me, I need to know,” Emma pleaded with the doctor as she observed Mia, who was peacefully asleep.
“Of course it’ll be fine. The only lasting mark will be a small scar, but it’ll be practically imperceptible, I assure you. Only you’ll know that it was ever there. Mia has a lot of growing to do, and when she’s 10 years old and looks in the mirror, she won’t even notice it,” the pediatrician explained in a lighthearted manner to reassure Emma.
“She won’t remember it, but I will. I’ll never be able to forgive myself,” Emma put her hands to her face and began to cry inconsolably. She felt deeply guilty about what happened.
Dr. Sandra approached her and, trying to comfort her, told her: “You’re not to blame for anything. I know that you’re a great mother and that you haven’t stopped taking care of your baby since she was born. You and your husband are doing the best you can like everyone else. Do you know how many times I felt like a bad mother? A lot. And I’m a pediatrician. I’m supposed to be the best mother of all because of everything I know about children and medicine. But no, when you become a mother, everything you thought you knew changes and you feel like a child again to whom you have to explain everything. So no, you’re not guilty of what has happened. It’s been an accident, that’s it.”
Emma looked at her with eyes full of pain, but for the first time, she seemed to understand and gave her a slight smile as she nodded. After a week of hospitalization, Mia and her parents returned home. The girl was fully recovered from the unexpected accident. Her parents only had to check that the inflammation did not return and continue giving her the medication for a few more days at home.
Everything was in a state of alarm that the Whittingtons would never forget, but it served as a reminder of something very important, something we all must remember from time to time: life is a risky adventure, and no matter how careful we are, no matter how secure we may feel, there will always be things that are beyond our control. And that’s not a reason to stop being good people. We’re all human beings who make mistakes, but should never stop trying.
