One boy’s Christmas gift ended up in an unexpected place — his stomach.
Kiara Stroud gifted her seven-year-old son, QJ, a pair of Apple AirPods for Christmas. Just three days later, he accidentally swallowed one while holding the longer side of the earpiece in his mouth.
Luckily, mom wasn’t too far away and sprung to action.
She rushed her son to the hospital, where doctors took X-rays, only to find the wireless piece of technology sitting just below his ribs.
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“We actually saw it because it has metal in it, so we could see it in the X-ray and I’m like, ‘This boy really swallowed his AirPod!'” Stroud told WSB-TV.
Stroud took to Facebook to share a photo of the X-ray, which clearly showed what she described.
“I can’t make this up. My child, my child. Thanks for all of the prayers,” she wrote in the post. “We’re home. No more AirPods for this kid.”
The boy’s doctor at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egelston apparently had no idea what an AirPod was, Stroud explained.
“She was like, ‘An AirPod? You know, it’s really unique. I never really heard of this,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, it’s a wireless headset,’ and she was just amazed,” she said.
The mother used the experience as a quality teaching opportunity and showed her son lots of love after his mishap.
“Today, we didn’t yell at him, didn’t curse, didn’t ask why, didn’t tell him he was too old, didn’t shame him, and didn’t make the situation worse,” she wrote on Facebook later that day.
“He already felt bad. He was scared and nervous. We let him know that everything was going to be OK, stayed calm, and it helped him to relax so that the doctors could do their jobs.”
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QJ left the hospital with the AirPod still in his stomach and the assurance that it would eventually pass naturally.
Until then, he’s a bit concerned what would happen if his phone, which he also received for Christmas, connected to the earbud and started playing music.
“He was like, ‘Mom. I don’t want my phone… I don’t want to be near my phone. I don’t want it to connect to my phone and start playing music,'” she explained.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ He’s a crazy kid.”
Stroud said she wouldn’t be giving her son AirPods again until he was a little bit older.
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