My daughter had pink eye this past week and gave it to her little brother. Hers went away relatively quickly, but Jairden's is hanging on due in part to the head cold he got along with it and the brownie he had on Sunday. It was one that I made so it was low in sugar but it was still sugar. Bad bacteria feed on the tiniest amounts of sugar, its crazy. I have been fighting off getting sick too and I only had a half of one. It just proves to me that sugar is just something we need to stay away from all together.
This morning he woke up with super crusty eyes, poor baby, so when I got home from MOPS I washed his eye with some Burt's Bees Baby Shampoo, which is pH balanced so feels like water. Don't be fooled with other "Tear Free" baby shampoos, they are not tear free. They simply contain a numbing agent so while it is burning the heck out of your baby's eyes and doing damage to their mucus membranes they can't feel a thing. Once I had them cleaned up I put some Neosporin on a q-tip and rub that around the outside of his eye. Spend the money and get the brand name regular Neosporin, they don't use mineral oil and white petroleum is the last ingredient on the list. With in a half hour the swelling went down and the redness was gone. I did it again after he fell asleep and put some drops of fresh breastmilk in his eyes, so hopefully when he wakes up he will be goop free.
Update: After only sleeping an hour, ah-hem, he only had a small amount of goop, but really it only looks like he has sleep in his eyes. Yeah!! I will keep up this treatment until tomorrow for sure and them we will see how he is when he wakes up. 4:26 pm Tuesday Update #2: He had no goop this morning, just a little stuck to his eyelashes, I can't believe how fast that worked. I washed his eyes again last night before bed, put a little Neosporin around his eye, (in the corner and on his lashes, massage the corners to help unclogged the duct) and a few drops of fresh breastmilk. I saved $150 on an office visit and $20 for the drops, plus the torture of having to hold down a screaming infant to put drops in his eye because they sting.
I like that you didn't go get an antibiotic right away. A little interesting info I learned from my brother-in-law (who actually is a doctor): most pinkeye cases are actually viral and will go away without antibiotics. If it's bacterial, there will generally be lots of redness on the skin surrounding the eye, and there will be a thick almost mucus-like discharge. Otherwise, if the discharge is more watery, it's most likely viral.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing how over-prescribed antibiotics are!