Pacifier causes second-degree burns, sends screaming toddler to hospital

The pacifier was attached to the 2-year-old Cuyahoga County girl while she napped in late July, and doctors said the heat from her body caused the pacifier's rubber ring to stick to her body, WOIO-TV reported.

Ashley Bilek said when her daughter, Madelynn, pulled the pacifier off, it left an angry-looking, painful wound on the girl’s stomach.

"When I picked her up she screamed and she grabbed her side," Bilek told WOIO.

"I lifted up her shirt and saw that she had this perfect circular wound on her. I didn't know what it was."

The Bileks rushed the toddler to a nearby hospital, and eventually had to take her to a burn center when the wound didn’t heal properly with medicated bandages.

Unfortunately these kinds of injuries are not uncommon in children, but Bilek said she wants other parents to understand the risks of children falling asleep on top of objects.

"When someone is laying down on something like this and it causes pressure, it can decrease blood flow to the skin. That area of the skin kind of dies off and essentially mimics a burn injury," Dr. Anjay Khandelwal of the Comprehensive Burn Center told WOIO.

"If she was laying on this clip for a prolonged period of time, sometimes we see damage that mimics third-degree burns, and there's a lot of times where something like that can even cause damage to the underlying muscle."

Luckily in Madelynn’s case only her skin, and not her muscle, was affected.