Hey what do you know, at last Jessica is out of the minus X days old state, having finally passed her expected due date even though according to the calendar she has been with us for two whole months already! :)
Anyway, the point is that over these two months that she has been out of the womb, her soft little fingernails have grown to an alarming length, becoming a bit of an irritant to herself has she routinely scratches herself in the face or on the nose or against the eyelids.
Back when she was still at the hospital, we were advised just to leave the nails because at that point they were still too much a part of her skin to be able to do anything about without causing her pain, and so we left it and watched it grow.
However, we are now well out of this phase and at last the time to do something about the long nails has come to a head. Advice we got on dealing with this problem ranged from special baby clippers, using a pair of scissors and even biting them off, but in the end it was a piece of brilliance from Andy (who just had her beautiful little Annabella about a month ago co-incidentally) that put us on the right track:
The easiest way to sort out the long nails of a newborn baby is to use a nail file.
Because the nails are so, so soft, they file down incredibly easily and more importantly, don’t leave any jagged or rough edges that might make it easy for the baby to scratch itself.
So now you know. Pretty nifty eh?