[Author’s Note: As of September 2020, I officially disavow the contents of this post.
Please forgive me — this story is preachy and hypocritical. I would pull it down, except I’m loath to remove a written record that was, at the time of its crafting, true to our journey as a family. However, I have adjusted the ending, which was originally a bit of an exaggeration (if not an outright fib).
Oh, and to set the record straight — I now use hydrocortisone on my kids all the time.]
Sometimes, the cure is worse than the disease. If Bo could talk, he might argue that this was one of those times for him.
It all started about a month or two ago, when the temperature swings and dry winter air started to exacerbate an on-again-off-again rash on my son’s sensitive skin. Each time the rash appeared, a timely application of baby lotion banished it for a few days — until one day, the red splotches refused to be banished.
Instead of shrinking, the inflammation spread — across his torso, up his neck, and down each arm. It was time to face it: Borealis had eczema, and it wouldn’t be going away on its own.
Not many experiences exist that are worse for a parent than watching one’s child be in discomfort or pain — and it was very clear that my son was, indeed, in discomfort. As the weather worsened, so did his demeanor.
Let me be clear — Bo’s typical demeanor isn’t exactly what you would call “sweet”. We’re still talking about the same lovable hellion who made Traveling with a Strong-Willed Child so tragic to experience but so hilarious to write. However, there was a marked difference between his typical anarchist behavior and his itchy, uncomfortable, perma-cranky behavior.
We were desperate to ease our son’s skin woes. I would say, “We tried everything,” but that is, of course, not true. “Everything” is a lot to try. I can truthfully say, though, that it *felt* like we tried everything.
We started with his clothes. I rewashed everything in a hypoallergenic, fragrance- and dye-free detergent, no fabric softener, with several tablespoons of baking soda and an extra rinse cycle. I dried the clothes on delicate, with no drier sheet. The resulting bodysuits were as sensitive-skin-friendly as they come. Yet despite all this, changes to our laundry habits weren’t enough to heal Bo’s skin. His eczema remained red and puffy, and everything but his collared shirts exposed the garish rash on his neck. (Good thing he’s such a well-dressed little gentleman, huh?)
So we moved on to salutary ointments. We slathered Bo in an extra-moisturizing baby lotion. Then we slathered him in a *different* extra-moisturizing baby lotion. Then we switched to almond oil. Then we tried a rather expensive eczema wash/cream set. Finally, we turned to coconut oil, which my cold hands could barely get above 76°F. Most nights, the chunks weren’t entirely melted before I rubbed them on my poor, ruddy son.
Alas. Nothing worked. The baby lotions and the almond oil elicited no change in condition — ditto for the coconut oil. But the eczema lotion? Well, that made him scream.
Granted, the lotion only made him *cry* at first. We thought that his tears stemmed simply from his frustration with getting out of the bath and being cold, wet, & naked. But over the course of about a week, his ordinary sobs escalated into blood-curdling, stop-you’re-hurting-me wails. You would have thought that we were rubbing sulfuric acid on him.
The night that our son’s yells finally shifted from “discomfort” to “pain”, Taylor looked at me and promised, “Never again. We’ll figure out something else.” So we put away the mostly-full eczema wash/cream set and resolved to try coconut oil instead. [Note: Incidentally, Taylor actually uses the eczema cream on his face now. Thankfully, it does not produce the same reaction from him as it did from our son.]
So that’s how we ended up transforming our kid into a piña colada doppelgänger each night. Bo began to eye me resentfully any time I vigorously rubbed my hands together, but thankfully, his nightly grumbles were of the usual, not-an-axe-murder-victim sort.
After a few nights of applying the virgin coconut oil, we thought that the baby looked a little better — or, at least, not any worse. Or, at the very least, not much worse. The truth of it was, we couldn’t even tell whether the oil was helping or hurting — which meant that, despite all its purported antimicrobial benefits, coconut oil was not the panacea we sought.
So after weeks of trying numerous “remedies”, only to end up with a child who was slightly worse off than before, I finally gave up.
One afternoon, Taylor came home to find me tearfully trying to cuddle our son. [Note: Borealis doesn’t like to be cuddled when he’s awake. Our “snuggles” typically end with him deftly wriggling out of my grasp.]
I blinked up at my husband and thickly said, “Ok, call the doctor and make an appointment. His skin isn’t getting any better. Like, I’m actually embarrassed to go anywhere with him now because I feel like such a bad mom. Practically any day now, Child Services is going to show up and cart him off to a get-well-quick clinic for kids with dumb parents.” [Note: Even at the time, I was pretty sure that this is not actually what Child Services does.]
Taylor: <grunts consolingly>
“Don’t you grunt consolingly at me!” I exploded. “I’m serious! Like what good am I as a mom if I can’t even get my son less bad skin?” [Note: I write better than I speak.]
“Babe,” Taylor said, extricating a wriggling Bo from my grasp. “Child Services is not going to come take Borealis from us. We are not bad parents. You are not a bad mom. I will call and make a doctor’s appointment.”
“But then they’re going to give him antibiotics and then his microbiome will be gone!” I blubbered. “Totally wiped out!”
Taylor removed a questing baby finger from his nose, then assured me, “They won’t give him antibiotics. They might give him a topical steroid though.”
“But that’s horrible for him too! It destroys the skin barrier! He’ll be ultra-vulnerable to infections now, forever!” [Note: Recent research supports this assessment, although not to the hyperbolic point to which I stretched it. An especially good primer on the skin microbiome can be found here.]
“I don’t know babe,” Taylor sighed. “They might have us do an elimination diet, and they’ll probably have us do lectins first… So what do we have that’s gluten-free that he’ll eat?”
I looked down at my strong-willed little monster and blew out a breath. “Short answer? Nothing.”
Bo had been going through a phase where even blackberries — the star of If You Give a Kid a [Quinoa-Spinach-Apple] Meatball… — couldn’t hold his attention for long. He would squish them in his baby fist and let them fall to the ground, where remnants of them linger even still. At the time, the only thing (besides breastmilk) that he would consistently consume was Honey Nut Cheerios and Annie’s Original Cheddar Bunnies. Neither snack is the pinnacle of health, but hey — I feed him what I can get him to eat.
“I guess I’ll go to the store and get some gluten-free pasta and snacks,” I suggested as Taylor set our squirming child on the floor. Bo immediately toddled over to the dog and grabbed a fistful of her fur. Mache shot me a long-suffering look as Taylor went to change out of his work clothes.
“We could go tonight as a family!” Taylor called from our room.
“Yeah, I guess so — although it’s already getting late,” I yelled back. “I just hate, like, spending money on more things that he’ll refuse to eat. Mache has never had it so good!” My dog licked her chops in agreement. [You can read When Fur Babies Get Supplanted for a discussion of Bo and Mache’s relationship — especially with regard to food.]
Taylor reappeared wearing jeans, a white V-neck, and a snapback. “Thanks for doing my laundry!”
“Ugh,” I retorted. “Your dirty clothes were fricking overflowing onto the floor. Like, actually reducing my quality of life. But you’re welcome, I guess.” Always gracious — that’s me.
Taylor smirked at me, then snatched Bo up and walked into the kitchen. I trailed behind them.
“Are you a little monster?” my husband asked. Bo affirmed his identity with a sloppy raspberry. Taylor laughed and then turned back to me.
“Anyway, continuing our discussion. He’s gonna be ok no matter what happens. I don’t think that we’ll have to give him an antibiotic, but even if we do, then we’ll work through that together. He’ll be fine. Plus, you’re still nursing him, so the breastmilk will restore his gut flora, right?”
[Note: Medical research supports this conclusion as well. Mother’s milk contains its own wealth of microbes that protect mommy and baby and help establish and protect baby’s developing gut environment. This article from Breastfeeding USA is especially informative about breastfeeding and the infant’s gut microbiome.]
I sighed. “Yeah… I just wish there were some way to allow his skin, like, to heal itself, you know? I really thought the coconut oil was going to work!”
Taylor: <grunts sympathetically>
I sat down against the cabinets, and Bo crawled onto my lap. “Like, didn’t you read some eczema article that was super pro-coconut-oil? Can you remind me what it said?”
Taylor sat down beside us. “Um… I think it had said something about the coconut oil being antimicrobial, which theoretically reduces the amount of staph bacteria on the skin, which theoretically reduces the infections associated with eczema… or something. I can’t remember.” Taylor looked down at his lap sheepishly.
“So why do you think it didn’t work, then?”
Taylor: <grunts noncommittally>
I rolled my eyes. “So much for being married to a biochemical engineer,” I quipped.
Alas, the rejoinder was lost on Taylor, who was peering down Bo’s shirt. Cringing, he said, “I’m going to take him out of this outfit. I think it’s just aggravating his rash even more.”
So there we all were in the kitchen, two barely-adults and one almost-naked, rubescent baby. I looked at my son’s scaly skin and started to cry again.
“Don’t cry, Wifey,” my husband soothed. “He’s still happy — well, he’s still himself, at least. And he’s still healthy — for the most part. And he still loves the boob,” Taylor concluded as Bo tried to pull my bra away from my chest.
“Only the breast for you, Borealis,” I joked halfheartedly. It wasn’t yet time to feed him for the evening, though, so I pulled my shirt up to my neck and hunkered down against the cabinets. Nearly-naked Bo squawked indignantly in response.
“Not time yet?” Taylor asked. We have been slowly shifting to fewer and fewer feedings per day, and at the time of this story, I was in the process of eliminating Bo’s late afternoon nursing session.
“No, another fifteen minutes,” I sighed. “That should effectively combine the late afternoon and early evening feedings, I think.”
My husband turned back to Bo. “Gotta wait, buddy. Trust me… the boob is better when you don’t force it.”
I smirked. “Great advice. I think that’s totally what any reputable lactation consultant would tell him, too.”
Only, at that moment, I remembered something that a reputable lactation consultant *had* told us, almost a year and a half ago. I examined my son pensively, then asked, “Hey, do you remember that breastfeeding class we had to go to?”
“The one where everyone made boob jokes the whole night? Yeah, I think I recall that one.”
I shot a glare Taylor’s way. “No, I’m serious! Do you remember how the nurse had said something about, like, if your kid had a stye, then you should squirt breastmilk in their eye and that would help it heal? Not, like, actual *you* — the hypothetical ‘you’, of course.”
Taylor shifted on the tile floor, and I wondered if his bad hip was bothering him in the cold. “Um, yeah, I guess I remember that. Why?”
“Well, I think she had said that breastmilk was a good treatment for diaper rash, too.”
Taylor nodded slowly. “Yes, I do remember that part.” Then, catching my drift, he asked, “You think it’ll help here?”
“I don’t know,” I conceded. “But it can’t hurt, right?”
“Probably not, unless it scalds his skin like that eczema cream did.”
“Great! Thanks for the vote of confidence, babe!” I chirped as I extricated my breast from my bra. “Here goes!”
And with that, it was open season on babies. I sniped my son several times in the back before he even knew to turn around, and at that point, it was all-out war. I squirted him aggressively across his torso and along his arms. Breastmilk ricocheted off his skin and onto the cabinets and tile as well. Meanwhile, my son’s maw opened wide in a move that prompted Taylor to remark, “You’re going to need a bigger boob.” I stiffed-armed Borealis as he wailed in frustration. Taylor just sat there. Well, that is, he just sat there, until he got nailed with some milk splatter. Then he left the room.
Eventually, Bo’s whole body was covered with milk, and I finally let him nurse. Target practice had left him sticky and wet, and I clutched his naked little body to mine to keep him from getting too cold.
“Go grab us a pair of pajamas?” I requested. As Taylor complied, he shook his head and joked, “Man, what a tease… Dangling what he wants most in the world just out of reach. You’re the worst kind of mommy.”
He returned a few seconds later with jammies. “You know,” he started. “You know, I think he actually looks less red already.”
I looked down at my nursing son. I didn’t want to get my hopes up, but there were patches that were indisputably less inflamed now. “Yeah, I think so too,” I agreed.
Even though Bo’s bedtime was technically still a half hour out, he was clearly ready to sleep. I guess the emotional exhaustion of the preceding ordeal had caught up with him already. I laid my son in his crib and returned to Taylor in the kitchen.
“He’s gonna be ok!” I whispered hopefully.
“Yes, Wifey,” Taylor answered. “He’s gonna be ok.”
And, indeed, he was “gonna be ok”. The next morning, our son’s skin looked better than it had in the previous month. Another application of breastmilk reduced the inflammation and redness even further — and likewise for the next dosing as well. The only problem was, Borealis absolutely loathed these breastmilk-application sessions. Each time I aimed my boob at him, he squalled in impotent indignation.
Fast forward about a week. I continued dutifully spritzing Borealis with breastmilk morning and night, even despite his angry caterwauling. At the time of this writing, the baby is almost entirely back to flesh-toned, and any flareups he has are generally eliminated within a day or two by some targeted breastmilk application. His torso is still dry, but he’s in an undeniably better mood.
However, his improved mood doesn’t mean that things in our house have gotten, well, “normal”. Even when he’s happy, Borealis has a way of making our lives pretty interesting — and even babies know that revenge is a dish best served cold. Like, icy cold. [Foreshadowing!]
Last Wednesday night, around the usual time, Borealis indicated that he was ready for bedtime. While Taylor started on dinner, I brought my son to the nursery and sprayed him with milk as he wailed in frustration. After about thirty seconds (which, from my son’s perspective, probably felt closer to thirty years), I stuffed him into a pair of pajamas and offered him the boob that had so recently been hosing him down.
Freed from the lactational oppression, my son contentedly guzzled milk as his eyelids became heavier and heavier. Judging our feeding to be complete, I settled him into his crib, where he immediately curled up and fell asleep.
The rest of the evening passed pretty uneventfully. Taylor and I were in bed before 11pm, and we didn’t stir until Bo’s cries awoke us around 5:30am — his normal early-morning feeding time. Taylor pulled himself from bed, retrieved our son, and deposited him next to me, whereupon I stuck a boob in his face until he latched. After a few minutes, he pulled off and made to go back to sleep.
I hefted Bo into my arms, swung my legs out of bed, and shuffled across the hall into the nursery.
If only I had known what would happen when I got there. I would have shuffled into the bathroom instead.
As I set foot on the nursery’s geometric rug, my son let forth a flood of historic proportions. Every ounce that he had just ingested came pouring out of his mouth, and probably out of his nose too.
How to describe it… Well, at the time, all I could think was, Log flume! Upon further, more-alert reflection, I’ve decided that a better description would be “a torrential gush”.
Borealis spewed two waves of warm liquid, which coated my front, soaked my underwear, and seeped into the rug around my feet. I shrieked in surprise and disgust.
The baby got me. The baby got me good.
Oh, so that’s how it feels, I realized.
Let me be clear: Borealis was not intentionally affecting vengeance on me. He was, however, unintentionally affecting very effective vengeance. I immediately regretted all the times I had ever sprayed him with breastmilk.
“Taylor?” I called. “Can you come help me?
After a minute, my [also half-asleep] husband came into the nursery with a rag in hand.
“He spit up all over me!” I told him.
Even in the gloom, I could see Taylor’s sardonic look. “Yeah, I heard,” he said, “and I think the rest of the neighborhood did too.”
My husband crouched to mop up the ocean of spit-up as I stood there holding Bo, who was crying at this point.
“Oh, baby,” I cooed. “I’m sorry this happened to you.”
My son cuddled closer and gave another hiccupy sob in response. Tears sprang to my eyes, and I gave him a reassuring kiss on the forehead. Warm, but not feverish. I hoped this vomiting episode would be an isolated incident.
“Do you think I should feed him again? Like, it wouldn’t hurt him, right?” I asked my husband.
Taylor straightened up. The carpet was still soaked, but he had mopped up most of the milk from the hardwood.
“No, I don’t think it would hurt him,” he answered after a pause. “See if he’ll even nurse?”
The answer was yes, he would nurse. Borealis was actually very interested in refilling his tummy.
After his breathing returned to normal, I resettled him in his crib and stepped back to observe. I was soaking wet and shivering in the morning chill. [Note: I want to state for the record that Taylor didn’t join me in my frigid vigil. Once he cleaned up the breastmilk, he skedaddled back to our warm bed.]
Watching my son sleeping snugly in his crib made me wish for a moment that I also wore footie pajamas, rather than just a pair of hiphuggers — extremely damp highuggers.
After about a minute or two of shivery surveillance, I decided that the baby wasn’t going to throw up again — which, thankfully, was an accurate assumption. I tiptoed back to my cold room and slid into bed. I could feel that Taylor was huddled on the far side of the mattress, so I scooted over until I was spooning his 6’5” frame. No need to keep this punishment to myself!
“You can’t escape me,” I whispered sweetly. “I will always find you.”
“Ewwwww, you’re so sticky and wet!” came the pillow-muffled reply. Taylor tried to shift away from me, but he was too close to the side of the bed.
“What’s mine is yours,” I yawned.
Taylor: <grunts testily>
“Oh hush,” I mumbled back. “You’re taking a shower in, like, two hours.” [Note: Unfortunately, the same could not be said for me. Embarrassingly, I would wear the results of Bo’s accidental revenge for, like, two days.]
Taylor: <grunts in acquiescence>
“But you know, it’s not all bad,” I murmured.
Taylor: <grunts inquisitively>
I cuddled in closer and kissed the back of his neck. “Yeah, there’s a silver lining here. Just think — at least I won’t be getting eczema any time soon!”