Little Boy Blue

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Don’t be alarmed at what you see, it’s a medicine called Gentian Violet, but this will give you  a glimpse of what he and I looked like for a whole week. 

Unfortunately, both Joseph and I were being treated for thrush this last week.  For those of you who are blessed not to know what thrush is, I’ll fill you in.

Thrush causes white patches along the inside of the baby’s mouth.  Normally it’s just on the cheeks but sometimes when it goes untreated it will spread to the roof of the mouth, gums, tonsils, and back of the throat.  That’s exactly what happened here with Joseph.  When this happens it’s very painful to swallow, and since that’s his sole way of surviving you can imagine how miserable he must have been.  Well since it had gone untreated for so long it spread to me during feedings.  After a couple weeks of unbearable pain and bleeding I wanted to give up on breast feeding all together.  It’s the exact same thing that happened with Emma around three or four months of age.  But how do you know what to look for?  I didn’t know this was what was causing me so much pain with Emma and that it could have been treated.  I had no idea that what was forming in my babies’ mouths was an infection and causing them just as much pain.  To be honest I thought it was just cottonmouth and that they needed to eat.  Live and learn I guess!

Instead of stopping, Jared told me that there was a lactation consultant in our ward, so I went and talked to her.  She told me all of this stuff about thrush and she told me that I needed to act quickly because Joseph was in a lot of pain and I was getting cuts that could get infected and then we’d have to treat mastitis (a whole other can of worms ). 

So for three days I had to apply this Gentian Violet to the inside of his mouth and to myself.  So, as you can see from the picture, Joseph’s face was stained, as well as his shirts, his sheets, his hands (they’d end up in his mouth sometimes), me, my shirts, my sheets, and anything or anyone that would touch any of these things.  I think this was the most stressful week I’ve had as being a mother, just trying to keep the staining to a minimum and working through the pain of it all.

It was our last day of “painting” yesterday and I have to say I and Joseph feel and look so much better!

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