Curve Balls

Having experienced twins and a singleton, I thought I'd kind of been through most baby issues, but this baby has proved that I don't know anything yet!

Since Isabel's cord came off, it's always been a little red and oozey. I brought it up to her pediatrician at her 2 week appointment, but he thought it probably just needed to dry out some more and told me not to submerge it completely in water. She loves her baths and its one of the only things to settle her down at night, so this was a little harder for me to follow 100%. I tried to stretch out the days in between baths instead, and still bathed her in her tub.


The drainage and irritation was getting pretty bad. After researching her symptoms online, I was getting a little nervous, belly button infections can be pretty serious in infants, so I took her into the doctor. Dr. Kiehl wasn't available, so we saw the PA there.

She took a culture swab to check for bacterial infections, and gave us some antibiotic ointment to apply to the belly button 3x's a day.  I was amazed at how quickly the ointment worked! The redness and drainage was completely gone by the next day!

We got a phone call from the PA a few days later saying the culture had come back positive for Strep! Yikes! She told us to continue applying the ointment for another week, and call if there was any signs of fever or abnormal fussiness (with Isabel that's kind of hard to differentiate!) I was so glad I took her in! I feel like I've really had to follow through with my gut instinct with this child. I guess if I've learned anything from the 3 others, it's not to ignore my "Mommy instinct", and to be a little more assertive.

Here she is about two weeks later, everything seems totally cleared up and we haven't had any more trouble with redness, or drainage, crossing our fingers that it stays that way!