Toddler fingernails cracking and falling off!

[ChampagneTastes]

Please help! A couple of days ago we noticed that my 14mth old DS had white lines across his fingernails on one hand. It looked an awful lot like he had trapped them in a door or something like that. This morning, his thumb nail was actually hanging off (there was still a little bit there but most of it was hanging by a thread) and the next finger was looking like it was going to go the same way.

It was suggested at nursery that perhaps it was an infection and having googled it, someone else suggested that it could be the result of a illness from a few weeks back. This would tie in with the awful reaction he had to his MMR.

Has anyone had any experience of this? Should I go to the doctor? Is there anything I can do to help it? And, crucially, will his nails grow back properly?

Yes the nails all grew back fine! She wasn't ill so I don't know what happend. It took a while but completely normal now.

Thank you - that's reassuring. Was it all her nails or just some? The suggestion on google was that it was the result of an illness some time ago (the theory being that it takes a while for the nails to grow out). Could that have been the case? And did you do anything to the nails as they went?

My 2 year old went through this earlier in the year and it was some weeks after she had Foot & Mouth disease. Eventually most of the nails fell off but they all grew back. And like you I also thought she must have trapped it in a door. It didnt look like it was painful at all.