Graphic content warning: this article includes photos of an injured finger.
The mum of a baby whose fingertip was cut off after it became caught in a folding step stool is urging other parents to be aware of the dangers – and to keep theirs well out of reach of little hands.
Kay de Bruyn, 35, from Alberta in Canada, said she kept a step stool next to the sofa so her eldest son could get on and off it to watch TV.
Advertisement
But one morning, disaster struck when she turned her back for a moment and heard a “thud”, followed by her youngest son, who is one, screaming and crying.
“I had never heard a cry like that before,” de Bruyn told HuffPost UK. “He was lying on his stomach and the stool was now collapsed and lying on the ground in front of him.
“I thought he might have tripped and hit his face on it. But when I picked him up, there was blood everywhere. I caught a glimpse of his middle finger – it looked like the tip was gone.”
Advertisement

Kay de Bruyn
The mum said her son was inconsolable and she began to panic.
“I grabbed a clean cloth from the bathroom and held it to his finger. I wish I could say I stayed calm, but I completely lost it,” she said.
After calling her husband and her parents, she ran across the street with her son and knocked on her neighbour’s door.
Advertisement
“I explained what had happened and asked them to check if the fingertip was truly gone,” she said.
“They gently took my son, checked, and confirmed it. Still holding him, they came back to the house with me and even offered to drive us to the emergency room.”
The parent quickly ran upstairs to see if she could locate the fingertip. “And that’s when I saw it: the tip of his finger was still stuck in the stool,” she recalled.
“I brought the stool downstairs, and my neighbour pried it out using a clean kitchen knife. While he did that, I called emergency services, and they instructed me to place the fingertip in a clean plastic bag.
Advertisement
“The ambulance arrived and took us to the children’s hospital, where they reattached the fingertip. Unfortunately, part of it didn’t survive and eventually fell off.”
Because part of the fingertip is missing, her son’s nail is now growing over the tip of his finger and the family is hoping to get a referral to a plastic surgeon.
“While he seems relatively unfazed by it now, I wanted to share our story – because I know this type of stool is common in many households,” said de Bruyn.
Advertisement
After posting a reel about what happened, the parent said two other families contacted her to say the same thing happened to their children.
“If I had known something like this could happen, I never would have kept it in our home,” she added.
For parents worried about having a folding step stool lying around, there are non-folding wooden and plastic options available (like this BabyBjörn one, which was rated best overall by Parents).
Advertisement