A short while after Edward was born, it became apparent that we needed to start cutting his finger nails (as he was starting to scratch his face).

Since that time it has been my job to perform this task as Liz has been too concerned about cutting his fingers off.

So every week or two I have been using a pair of baby nail scissors to cut Edward's finger nails. The complexity of this task has varied a lot depending on how long his nails were and how much he wanted to struggle (he doesn't even like having them being cut when he's asleep!). Overall though it has been getting gradually easier as he, and his fingers, get larger. He has certainly managed to maintain all of his fingers throughout.

A few weeks ago I decided that moving from scissors to baby nail clippers would make things easier and reduce the risk of any fingers falling off.

Unfortunately on one of my first attempts with the nail clippers I managed to include a small amount of finger! I drew blood and everything! :-(

Surprisingly Edward didn't seem to mind, so at least there weren't any screams to make my guilt even worse.

With the confession over, I'd just like to add that since then I think I've worked out what I did wrong and have managed a couple of further clippings without any more fingers getting in the way. The lesson remains though - nail clippers really aren't any safer than scissors for cutting baby nails.