How to clip a baby's fingernails

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This is where I humiliate myself. As a rule, I do not clip my baby's fingernails. With my first four, I just never did figure out how. Their little fingers were too wiggly and I was terrified that I would cut their tiny fingertips off. They say that you can cut them while they are sleeping, but once I get to that point, I'm not about to wake them up. Fortunately all of my babies have been blessed with thin, frail nails, just like their mother, and eventually they just kind of peel off at the top when they become too long. Then disaster struck...

When my fourth child was a newborn, I left him in the care of a friend at church while I played the organ. Mind you, we were in the same room, albeit a large one, and he was only in her care for less than half an hour as I played the hymns for the congregation, but during this time she apparently decided that he needed to have his nails clipped. As I sat at the organ listening to the talk, a horrible scream emanated from the congregation and my friend ran out of the chapel, clutching my new baby. During an appropriate lull in the meeting, I left the stand where I was sitting and went into the lobby to see what was wrong. Looking at me with the saddest eyes I've ever seen, my friend told me that she had decided to clip his nails and had accidentally clipped his little fingertip off. I'll be honest and admit right now that this was difficult to forgive, but I did forgive within a few minutes and we continued to have a strong friendship. She even kept coming to her piano lessons in my home, in which she would pay me an exorbitant fee for half an hour and we would sit and talk until my next student came.

As you can imagine, I was truly scarred from this event, an event in which my wildest fingernail-cutting nightmare had come to pass! But then something happened. Something wonderful....

I was given two newborns at once! It was then that I was forced to see the merits of cutting fingernails. These babies got scratched much more than any of my others had and then I figured it out. They were scratching each other! I had to put a stop to this, but how?

My first step was to comb through the aisles of Walmart to see what new-fangled baby nail clippers had been invented since the 70's, since that was the last time I had used them. Actually, not even then, because my mother had cut my nails, not I. To my surprise, I did indeed find "safety" nail clippers. I threw them in my cart, confident that I would have the success for which I had always longed.

When I returned home, I nursed the babies to make sure they had the proper amount of endorphins coursing through their blood, then began the attempt. As I fumbled and flustered and tried to make them hold still, something amazing happened. One of them grabbed my finger tight and wouldn't let go. Eureka! This was it! I would clip their nails while their little hand was tightly wrapped around my finger, like so...

This worked like a charm and all twenty little nails were trimmed within five minutes. So, this is my confession: I finally learned with child number nine how to clip a baby's nails. I post this in the hopes that you may learn sooner. Good luck, my friends.