Last week something scary happened. It wasn’t anything I had ever seen or heard of before and it really freaked me out. My manager was holding my two month old son while I filled out some papers for work and suddenly she yelled, “Oh my god! He needs to see a doctor!” I immediately turned around to see that my baby’s legs from his thighs to his toes were completely bright purple. I had never seen this before and I especially had never seen it happen to my son until that day.
I grabbed him from my manager and my first thought was that maybe his diaper was on too tightly. So I undid his clothes and loosened it up. His purple legs faded a little bit but not completely. Then I thought that maybe he was bit by a bug while he was being carried outside. Maybe it was an allergic reaction? What the heck is going on, I thought. What is this and why is it happening to my little man?
When I got home I called his pediatrician’s office and had a nurse call me back. She told me that I should probably bring him to the Children’s hospital emergency room so he can be looked at just in case there really is something wrong. It was off to the hospital we went…
After waiting for an hour to be seen I was getting really irritated. The lady we had checked in with came over to us and asked if I had checked in. I told her that I had done so an hour ago and she looked totally confused. She had forgotten that we were there! This was really aggravating since I wanted to know if my little boy was okay. I waited another half an hour before being called back!
My son was checked over really quickly by a nurse once we got back there. From there we were told to wait in another room until someone came in to get us. I was okay with that until we had been sitting there for 45 minutes in a darkened room and nobody had ever come in so my son could be seen by a doctor.
Finally we were able to move out of that room and get some real attention. The doctor came in and told me that my son’s legs turning purple is completely normal! He said that some babies will basically have a blood vessel spasm in their hands, legs, or both that will cause them to turn purple in color and then return to normal.
That was it! All that waiting just to be seen for two minutes to be told that everything is fine. Well I am glad my son is okay but I wanted to warn the rest of you with small babies out there – if your babies hands or legs turn purple suddenly and then go slowly back to normal it is nothing to be alarmed over. I would always call a doctor or nurse just in case but I just wanted to share my story and maybe save someone else the hassle of having to go to the emergency room!
