Hives again
This is quite the mystery. Between the eczema, the diaper rashes and the hives, I’m not sure what is going on. Is it a food? Is it the detergent? Is it the Clorox? I am at wits end. All I know is that I feel so awful for our little one because of what he goes through with these hives. It seems like he’s getting them every other day now, and they seem unbearable. Today they broke through the benadryl, which we were advised to keep him on until his appointment with the allergist on Feb 6th.
My suspicions are focused on the bleach. The pediatrician had us giving him ‘bleach baths’ once a week in order to treat the eczema. Basically we put a small amount of bleach in his tub once a week – it ends up smelling like a swimming pool in the bathroom. The weekly baths did wonders for the eczema, so it does work the way it is intended to… however I’m realizing now that the last few times he had hives were all on days that we gave him a bleach bath. So maybe he’s allergic to Clorox.
To make things more complex; I’ve been trying to figure out why he is getting really bad diaper rashes. I started to think it was the cloth diapers, so we took him out of cloth and put only disposables on him until the rash cleared up. We have very hard water here, so there is a chance that the detergent wasn’t rinsing out of the diapers completely. If this happens it creates a situation where the detergent in the diaper can actually react with urine and cause a ‘burn’ in the diaper area. The other possible problem is that if the diapers aren’t being disinfected then the left over bacteria on the diaper could also cause a ‘burn’. I wanted to eliminate any chance of either of these things happening, so I took our entire stock of cloth diapers and ran them through multiple cycles – rinses without detergent, washes with half the manufacturer’s recommended detergent, and then I resorted to the biggest nightmare of all green mom’s out there: bleach.
To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure what all the hype is about bleach. The only thing that bothers me about it is that it is dangerous to have around the house – so up on a high shelf behind lock and key it goes. Other than that if I understand the chemical reactions well enough, it should pretty much turn to salt. I have to ask my brother the chemist about whether or not this it is true. I digress….
I bleached the hell out of my entire stash of diapers. Two washer loads full, through numerous washing cycles — well you get the point. I spent two whole days washing diapers. Today I decided to give it a go and try a cloth diaper on Jaden again. The first diaper I put on him seemed to be fine. I put a disposable on him in between cloth diapers just as a precaution.
When I took Jaden in to change him out of the second cloth diaper of the day, I noticed he was super agitated on the changing table, and reaching around the back of his neck and scratching profusely. These are signs that he has the hives again. (He actually goes bonkers if you use anything to clean his diaper area other than water when he has the hives). Sure enough – he is covered from the top of his neck down to his knees in hives. The benadryl isn’t helping the itch. He scratched his neck so badly he started to bleed. All I could do was coat him in a layer of caladryl lotion and hope that it takes care of the itch until the hives settle down. I know if I call the doctor they’re going to tell me the same thing they told me the last half-dozen times I’ve called about the hives: as long as he can breathe okay and his lips and tongue aren’t swollen, the only thing we can do is give him the benadryl until we take him to the allergist.
Until then the poor baby suffers, and I’m back to disposables until I figure out if he’s allergic to bleach. Tomorrow I’ll be calling the allergist and see if they can take him any sooner. There’s no reason he should suffer like this.
Recent Comments