Stop Biting My Baby!

2nd bite

Something's been biting baby E and causing big, scary allergic reactions on his skin. The last time I'd seen something like this is when a spider bit me on the leg one summer in a cottage up in Muskoka, Ontario. The bite swelled up, itched like mad, turned red, purple, green then yellow before fading out.

The first bite was on his big toe but I did not get a photo of that. According to his pediatrician, it's an insect bite and baby E is having an allergic reaction which we can't do much about other than to wait for him to grow out of it. 

Until that happens, we were given some cream and anti-itch medication which causes drowsiness to help the inflammation go down and for baby E to get some sleep. Then it happened again and he was bit on the ankle. Which swelled up a little bit but seemed under control with the cream from the pediatrician.

4th bite

And then he was bit AGAIN, on the same ankle but on the back rather than the front. This time I took a picture, the swelling was horrible and baby E was horribly itchy and his sleep was all over the place.

The anti-itch meds seemed to help the first night, but from the second night onwards baby E would sleep for a solid 3 or 4 hours then he'd be extremely awake the rest of the night. 

I'm not sure if it was a side-effect but we decided to stop the meds and just continue with applying the cream on his bites.

Then double whammy, he was bitten TWICE on the SAME DAMNED LEG! Momma was not happy, momma was ready to hunt the godforsaken insect down and 'crrrrrrrrrush it like a cockroach!' (Masters of the Sea reference here, line made famous by Margaret Chan's character, wiki it here)

5th & 6th bite

By this time, baby E's night time sleep was shot to hell and I was desperately trying to keep him from gouging chunks of flesh off his leg with all the scratching that he was doing. I gave in once and fed him the anti-itch meds which let him sleep for a few hours then he was up and about the rest of the night.

Thank god for being able to nurse baby E while lying down at night, it helped to calm him down and distract him from the itch at night and gave the both of us a few precious hours of much needed sleep.

My poor itchy baby

Even so, he still looked like this for a few nights -->

But I'm happy to write that with a round of mild antibiotics (given on our third visit to his pediatrician when the bites became infected due to his scratching) and diligent cream application (no steroids, I checked 'cos I'm paranoid like that), baby E is good as new.

And momma can breathe a sigh of relief. After we called a cleaning company to clean and sanitize our mattresses and pillows.

The first bite

UPDATE: Hubby found the photo of the first insect bite on baby E's big toe.