Swallowing Lego

I agree, some of the tablets I take daily are larger than small Lego pieces! Although once swallowed they get digested rather than expelled!

I suppose that's what they mean when they talk about "s****ing a brick".

MissA

That doesn’t make sense. Lego bricks for little ones are big. Too big to swallow.

By the time children are able to manipulate the little bricks it’s unlikely they will be daft enough to swallow them....barring the odd idiot!

Crawling babies nicking lego from big brother/sister is not unkown!

My DGS's, who are 6, 8 and 10 regularly take their Lego models apart by using their teeth. More so when the pieces are tiny and they cannot manage with their fingers. I can see how small pieces might be swallowed, and am pleased to see that they are not dangerous to health if they are.

It was crawling babies finding bits from older siblings that got swallowed in our house - I only found tiny pieces in nappies a few times. We tried to keep older children with small Lego pieces away from babies - one way was to put the older child in playpen with Lego and let baby crawl around freely! But as everyone who has stepped on a bit of Lego in bare feet will know, it has a habit of escaping

As an extended “Lego family” (DC and DGC) I can honestly say I have never found a single piece of Lego in a nappy ! Or maybe I just didn’t look hard enough .

MissA

Never mind swallowing it, what about when you stand on it in bear feet! Ouch!

Bare not bear

MissAdventure

Going back a while, I had a friend who kept a bowl of disinfectant to hand when changing toddler nappies, in to which she dropped the tyres from Dinky cars, which inevitably appeared.

MissAdventure ?

?brilliant idea! thinking ‘outside of the box’.

Anja, Who are you kidding?

I wouldn't like to be too complacent. The normal lego bricks have some very sharp scratchy corners. They could scrape the intestines badly enough on their way through to cause an infection to get in.

Worse than stepping on a brick with bare feet, I once sat
on a Lego tree in the middle of the night. And it was in those carefree nude sleeping days. Ouch!

I always believed a child swallowing anything made of a hard material (I.e. most often a coin) should be x-rayed, to make sure it had gone into the stomach and not the lungs. Is that not true?

Willow - x-ray will work if you know they've swallowed something but first thing I knew about baby swallowing Lego was when it appeared in nappy.

When I was about 3 I stuck a small button up my nose. As it couldn't be found, I was x-rayed to see if it had gone into lungs, but apparently not. My mother was instructed to inspect the contents of my potty for a few days, and sure enough, the button appeared. It hung on a thread on the kitchen dresser for years afterwards - I suppose a sort of warning I have a slight phobia of small buttons since then!

My younger DD swallowed a WING NUT!! Right in front of me! I said "spit it out" so she (at about 30 months) swallowed it. We went for x-rays, and it was sitting in her stomach, clear as anything - a half inch across. The Dr said seeing as it had already cleared one sphincter, it should be fine moving from stomach to bowel, but I should watch her nappies in the meanwhile. Moving on three days, back for an x-ray, stomach and whole bowel clear. She was using the toilet as well by then. I didnt hear a clunk, but lots of whole wheat bread did the job!

I am not sure x-ray works on plastic though?

Actually, teddies don't like stepping on Lego either, so bear feet is quite right.

Frankly, I would discourage children from pulling lego apart with their teeth. I don't think it will do tooth enamel much good.

I would be concerned with a child swallowing a lego brick.my grandchilden are always suprvised they are 4 and 7 years

I was bayoneted in the leg when I fell on one of older brother’s little toy army figures. He had them in full battle over living room floor. Still bear the scar in calf 50 years later. He never apologised. Brother or toy figure.