Who Cooked the Baby?

When Henry was a newborn I used to put olive oil on his skin after his baths. We did this for the first couple of months of his life, keeping his skin soft and supple without any of the potentially harmful additives in commercial baby products.

As he got a little older and we headed south his skin wasn't dry and we didn't put any moisturizers on him. With winter weather upon us I decided he needed some oil after his bath on Wednesday. Out came the olive oil and I slathered it on from the waist up while he was still in the water. Once he was out of the tub I forgot to finish his oil rub from the waist down, and got him into his pajamas and ready for bed.

Henry had a rough night, tossing and turning, and even needing a middle of the night feeding to settle down again. I figured his teeth were bothering him, as he is starting to cut his first molar.

When we got up in the morning light and I got a better look at Henry I was alarmed to find him covered in a rash and sporting a huge swollen face!! Yikes! I got on the phone with the doctor's office and scheduled him in for 1:30pm. Then I woke Andy to have him take a look. We racked our brains for what Henry had eaten the day before that was different, but discovered the true culprit, olive oil, when we noticed that the rash was only from the waist up. Good thing I forgot to do his lower half!

All's well that ends well. The doctor gave me a prescription for hydrocortisone cream and recommended Benedryl. By next day he was looking much more like himself, and now, five days later you wouldn't even know that he had looked like we'd cooked him with the dinner.