‘The mom guilt is huge:’ Boy eats 13 magnets from toy, loses part of colon, mom says

At first, mom Jennifer White thought her 4-year-old son, Beck, had come down with the flu on Christmas Eve, WITI reported.

“He started to vomit a very dark color. It looked like coffee grounds. At that point I knew something was very wrong,” White said, WTMJ reported.

The family rushed Beck to Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin in Wauwatosa, where doctors found he’d eaten 13 tiny magnets from a plastic toy, White wrote on Facebook.

Surgeons removed parts of Beck’s colon, intestines and appendix that had been injured by the magnets, White wrote.

“When he individually ingested them they were doing what magnets do and trying to get to each other through his intestines, and it created holes in the lining so they had to fix those,” White said, WTMJ reported

Infections also are a danger of ingesting magnets, said Jennifer Hoekstra, an injury prevention specialist at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Today show reported.

“Now, the magnet is not going to leave your body,” Hoekstra added, according to Today.

Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin confirmed it was treating Beck for eating magnets, WITI reported. White said she had checked the toy before giving it to Beck and thought it was safe.

“The mom guilt is huge because you feel that you failed your child,” White said, according to the station.

“I don’t want another child to go through this,” White wrote on Facebook. “If you have little ones or chewers these are dangerous and we’re removing them from our home. Dogs could also break these open too.”

In a later Facebook post, White wrote that Beck is doing well and mostly sleeping as he recovers in the hospital. On Sunday, she wrote that Amazon had removed its listing for the toy involved in Beck’s illness.