Having a new baby is one of the most amazing yet anxiety-inducing moments in new parents' lives. There are so many awesome firsts to experience when you have a new baby like holding them for the first time, feeding them and even giving them their first bath, but there are also some firsts that can leave parents in a total panic. Any parent who has ever been tasked with trimming their baby's fingernails know exactly what this panic feels like.
When babies are first born their fingernails are so soft, you wouldn't think they would need to be trimmed, but you'd be wrong. Newborn nails seem to be able to do a lot of damage even though they're so tiny, leaving many new babies sporting a facefull of tiny pink scratches in those keepsake hospital photos. Thankfully those little baby mittens were invented to help keep newborns from constantly scratching their faces, and since babies sleep a lot, many parents use that opportunity to take as much time as they need to do some nail trimming.
As babies grow older, they're not so content to keep those mittens on their hands, and parents are faced with the daunting task of cutting the nails of a tiny person who often seems to have little control over their limbs as they flail their arms around at the precise moment you have your clippers in position. Things only get worse once your baby hits the one-year mark — when they're too little to sit still to even eat much less to make you feel like you can confidently trim their tiny, razor-like nails without drawing blood. So, what's a parent to do when their child is in desperate need of a nail trim? One parent has a handy hack that can save anyone on nail clipping duty a lot of anxiety and aggravation.
In an article posted on Offspring, mom Lorraine Allen shares a very relatable story of how much she dreaded having to cut her children's fingernails, especially as her kids began to reach toddler age. "Especially if, like my fourteen-month-old son, your child’s energy level rivals a non-stop, full-blown tornado," she wrote. Where there's a will, there's a way however, and she finally came up with a sure-fire way to keep her kids distracted and still long enough to get their nails trimmed. She writes that the one thing that has made nail clipping so much easier for her is a baby carrier!
"Strap your tiny tiger into a baby carrier, facing out, and snip away," she writes, claiming that the baby carrier keeps them contained just enough, and distracted just enough, to let mom or dad get their job done painlessly. "Although kids can still wave their arms and legs pretty freely, there’s something about the full-body harness that makes any resistance not only futile but super easy to manage."
It may not do the trick for everyone, but it's worth a try especially if you've been putting off that nail trim.
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