Emergency Continued

MLO, my mom, dad and I hung out in that ER room for 5 hours. MLO slept about 30 minutes over two naps. Within the first hour after administration of the drugs the redness and swelling largely subsided. By the time we left he only looked vaguely splotchy and his one eye was puffy, but nothing like it was when we arrived that morning. We were prescribed an EpiPen to have with us at all times, and have been given an order for a blood test that will theoretically indicate to what he is allergic. It seems that he may have ingested trace amounts of peanutbutter that morning, so peanut is the most likely culprit, though we'll have a better idea after his allergy test. Neither Hubby nor I have food allergies, nor did we when we were children, so this came as a surprise. I don't look forward to the constant vigilance required of a parent whose child may have a life threatening reaction to a food, especially a food as prevalent as peanuts. Of course it's possible that he isn't allergic to peanuts, or that he will grow out of this allergy. The allergy testing is not terribly accurate, but it's better than nothing, so it should give us some information we can use. The bottom line is we have to just wait and see. As with all things baby, this characteristic is as likely to unpredictably change as it is to stay the same. I just wish the consequences weren't so scary!

Emergency

Well we made the first of what is likely to be many trips to the emergency room on Tuesday morning. MLO and I went up to hang with my folks for a couple of days on Monday morning. That night he had me up at 2:30, 3:30 and 5:30. He has four teeth working toward the surface so the nights have gotten rough again. After nursing him at 6:00 I decided to see if there was anyone up and willing to take the little bugger so I could rest some more. My dad was up and they shared some english muffin, played and wandered around. By 9:00 we were starting his meal of cereal and banana and I noticed that the skin around his left eye was red and puffy. That had happened the last time we visited my folks and the inflammation had receded pretty quickly. This time I commented that they must have something around the house to which he was allergic. After breakfast I tried to lay him down for a nap (he'd been up since 5:30). He whined and cried while I tried to finish my own breakfast before jumping in the shower and running off to an appointment at 10:45. As he got more frantic my mom decided to go in and soothe him. Based on his inability to calm down she got him up. That's when she noticed his eye.

MLO's eye had gotten so red and puffy that it looked as though he'd been hit. The eye was rapidly swelling shut. As my mom showed his face to me he turned his head and I noticed that he had what looked like red welts (or hives) on his neck and shoulders. This prompted me to call our pediatrician (250 miles away) and leave a message with the physician's assistant. In the intervening minutes between our initial inspection of his head and neck and the end of my call to the doctor's office the swelling on his face and neck had worsened and we noticed more hives. This is when I started to freak out. The swelling was spreading and becoming more intense at a rapid pace; the most dominant thought in my mind was, "How long until he can't breathe?"

I ripped open his button-down footie pajamas and my stomach dropped. He had angry red swollen hives all over his body. His groin, his underarms, his torso, arms, and legs were all covered in swelling hives. At that point I had two voices in my head. The first one said, "Emergency room now!" the second one said, " Stay calm, he's breathing fine, he isn't crying, don't lose your head." In an attempt to be fiscally responsible I called our insurance to try to figure out if I would be totally screwed if I took him to an emergency room. It sounded like I would be.

One of the insurance sanctioned alternatives to the ER was known to my mom as a good place to go so we decided to head there. As I turned onto a busy street I realized that we had miles of pokey downtown traffic through which to meander while the hospital was a quick 3 minutes away. While stopped in the turning lane at a light, I couldn't shake this feeling that my son could start having breathing problems and I would be stuck in downtown Monterey at some light while a steady line of tourists marched across the street in front of me. In tears, feeling literally damned if I did and damned if I didn't, I made a split second decision to rush to the hospital. I checked the lane next to me and barrelled through the green light.

MLO happily babbled at my mom who was sitting next to him in the backseat. I can't tell you how much that calmed my nerves. He was breathing fine and was in good enough spirits to make conversation. When we got to the ER I dropped my mom and the baby off, knowing that she has been to an ER more times than I could count, and I parked the car. When I joined her she looked forlornly at me. She had signed us in but we were told to wait. I picked up the red, puffy little baby and paced in front of the front desk. Nurses spied me as they walked by and in no time we were being seen.

At this point MLO could only see out of one eye, and not very well. His ears were swollen and the red puffiness had spread all over his scalp, torso, arms and legs. Upon his examination the doctor told us that his temperature was normal, his lungs sounded good and no swelling was observed in his mouth or throat. They put in an IV, the little trooper only fussing for a moment when they stuck him, and administered a steroid and a histamine blocker....

Stay tuned for more, MLO is awake and hungry!

Back to the Rash Saga

Hubby and I are scientists. It follows, then, that we would experiment on our child.

When we got in touch with our diaper service about MLO's rash, they suggested that we try the diapers again after they had stripped them. This process is supposed to remove ammonia build-up and etc. So we gave it a shot. After a day of wearing the diapers MLO was red and irritated again. It took a day and a half of wearing the Huggies before his skin returned to normal. We then decided to wash the diapers in our own detergent. We use Costco's free and clear detergent, and MLO doesn't have skin problems where his clothes touch. So I washed about a day and a half worth of the diapers twice on hot, both times with an additional rinse after the wash for good measure. MLO's skin tolerated the diapers much better. He still gets a spotted rash now and again above his groin and on his sit bones, and he tends to be more interested in scratching himself. He doesn't seem uncomfortable, though, and I simply can't stand the thought of throwing all of those non-degradable diapers into a landfill. 

It is interesting to me that we used those diapers for 5 months before he developed a problem. I wonder if that indicates a propensity toward developing allergies. I am so curious about to what, exactly, he reacts. It must be some element of their detergent. I should ask them what they use.

So now we begin on the path of washing our own diapers. I don't have a problem with this, except when he has taken a mighty dump and sat in it before I've realized it. Then the poo is squashed against the diaper and is difficult to remove. I haven't gotten to the point where I put the diaper into the toilet and swish, nor have I designated a stick for poop scraping. I just keep hoping it doesn't happen. Ha.

I also don't know what to do about acquiring diapers. We are welcome to purchase the diapers we've been using from the service, but he has all but outgrown them. I also would like to get something softer and possibly more breathable, though I don't know such a diaper actually exists. I know that diapers made of hemp are supposed to be more absorbent and antimicrobial than those made of cotton, but accordingly they cost more. We will need at least 40 of them and the Cadillac of diapers runs nearly $20 a piece while the basic prefolds are $3-6 each. Ugh. It is still cheaper than the $10 a package at 26 diapers a package. It's funny how that seemed less expensive at the time.

During this time, Diaperpin.com has become a valuable resource. If you haven't looked around their site I recommend visiting. The site is dedicated to information regarding different cloth diapering options, cleaning suggestions, vendors and user ratings. It has proven very educational.

So there you have it. We are slowly finding our way back to cloth diapering full time.

Rash Saga Update

I hate to admit it, but with exclusive use of the Huggies, MLO's rash has all but disappeared. He has a mottled pink look to his entire diaper area, but the rash is a far cry from the raised, red, angry looking skin he had while wearing his 7th Generations and prefolds. Curses! I loved the relative sustainability of the 7th Generation diapers and the prefolds. While I'm afraid we will never return to the 7th Generation disposables, I am determined to find my way back to cloth diapers. Wish us luck and please comment with any recommendations or ideas.

On another note, I purchased some Desitin 'instant relief' cream, thinking that would mitigate the residual redness. After 2 applications his diaper area broke out something awful in a bright red rash. Desitin states clearly on their packaging that their creams are hypoallergenic, so this confirms our suspicion that MLO just has super sensitive skin. Honestly, it may not have anything to do with the Desitin, but I don't want a repeat of this redness so I'll never know. Ugh.

The Great Diaper Rash Saga

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing great about diaper rash. Red hot skin spanning the entirety of MLO's diaper shrouded nether regions means unhappy baby and guilty feeling parents. We tried Aquaphor, Desitin, Boudreaux's Butt Paste, aloe with lidocaine, anti-eczema lotion, 1% Hydrocortisone and Nystatin (the latter three on recommendation by the Doc) all to no avail. During our battle with this ailment we tried the Huggies Pure and Natural diapers, the 7th Generation diapers and the cloth diapers with the Bioliners (when we used creams) and nothing seemed to work.The rash would subside for a few days only to return with a vengeance. At times it seemed that the creams actually made things worse.

Sitting for a period of time in a car seat, or even just the high chair for a meal, exacerbated the inflammation. In addition to the redness, he had areas of dryness around where his Bummis cover touched his thigh. After I noticed this, I was careful not to let that junction get too tight, but the dryness and irritation persisted. I also noticed that this seemed to become an issue after he learned to crawl and sit. I suspected that some of the irritation was due to chafing, as the areas of redness were not confined to his bottom, but also coincided with places the diaper might rub.

While we switched up the diapers during trips out of town, we never decided to just try the Huggies by themselves for an extended period of time. As you may know from my other posts, our standard was to use the prefold diapers provided by our diaper service at home and the 7th Generation diapers when we were out or travelling for days. Now and then we would sprinkle the Huggies in there, but we never used them exclusively. Hubby and I began to suspect that the relative roughness of the 7th Generation diapers and possibly a component in our diaper service's detergent were the culprits behind this irritation. Being scientists, we decided to experiment.

I got a package of the Huggies and have used them exclusively for the last 8 days. Within a few days the rash was gone. He had some lingering redness and the dryness around his thighs persisted, but the severity has greatly decreased. In the last couple of days his redness as worsened, but it is less generalized and less intense. Throughout this diaper switching I have been applying the anti-eczema lotion when and where he seemed dry at every changing, and of course after every bath. I started to use the Boudreaux's yesterday, although it didn't seem to help. I also have reason to believe he may have a mild allergy to it, so I need to get some Desitin and try that instead.

Now that we seem to have a handle on this issue, we need to decide how to proceed with our original desire to cloth diaper. The first step is to contact our diaper service and let them know about our problem. They may have experienced this kind of issue before, and may have an alternative detergent we could try. However, I suspect that chafing caused as much of a problem as the possible allergy, since exclusive use of the 7th Generation diapers never eased his irritation. Possible alternatives include purchasing very soft prefold diapers or pocket diapers and washing them ourselves using detergent we know works for us. I fear that after making that investment (particularly if we choose the pocket diaper route), the issue will return and we'll end up using the Huggies again. To mitigate our losses, we could buy a day's worth of diapers and try that for a week (doing laundry every night). In that case we will have still purchased 7-10 diapers, and that many pocket diapers would run me close to $200. I find it hard to believe that a day's worth of diapers could cost that much money. Used ones are an option, although then the quality may be low (due to irresponsible use and care) and we've spent money for nothing. Ugh.

Do any of you guys have a recommendation on how we should proceed?