Chinese Parents Accidentally Feed 3-Year-Old Daughter Plastic Balls They Thought Were Candy

February 6, 2017

A Chinese couple had to rush their 3-year-old daughter to the hospital after she was fed polymer balls that were mistaken for sweets.

Parents from Jiangsu, China were distraught upon finding out that they had mistakenly given their daughter polymer balls, also popularly known as water babies, that looked similar to their 3-year-old’s favorite sweet treats.

According to Stomp, the mother went out to do some grocery shopping on and picked up several sweets for her daughter. She purchased something that looked like her daughter’s favorite candy, not knowing that it’s actually a pack of water babies.

Upon returning home and oblivious about what her recent buy, she started doing household chores and her husband took the canister full of “sweets.” He started feeding their daughter until the she finished the whole bottle.

Fortunately, they were able to find out soon enough that the “sweets” were actually polymer balls after the mother picked up a piece from the floor and tried it.

The 3-year-old was rushed to the hospital where an x-ray revealed spherical objects in their child’s stomach. The mother bought another canister of polymer balls to discover that it contained 280 water babies, meaning roughly 280 polymer sat in the poor girl’s stomach.

Fortunately, because they found out about their mistake early on, the doctor only needed to give the little girl medication so she could pass the polymer balls through her body.

Polymer balls are commonly used to supply water to plants. They are super absorbent and can expand up to 500 times their actual mass when they are put in water.

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