On Tuesday when I blogged about Little L’s latest health drama I was at my wits end. I played it off all cool and collected, but inside I was struggling. I mean, it’s one thing to want to always protect your children, but when the sun is the thing hurting them, the challenge is more than a bit daunting.
Lucky for me I have an awesome older sister who, despite being completely swamped with a huge move and her own life, is one of my most faithful readers. She read my post and emailed me right away to remind me that my oldest niece, her oldest daughter, had suffered from a similar issue when she was little. Only it wasn’t the sun she was allergic to, it was the sunscreen.
That’s right, the sunscreen, which I had diligently been applying to every single nook and cranny of my poor baby’s body. My baby is allergic to sunscreen of all things.
In an effort to protect my baby from what I thought was hurting her I was in fact coating her carefully in the stuff that was doing the damage. Figuring that out was bittersweet to say the least. It was a huge relief to finally know what was wrong and what we could do to fix it, but it was horrible to know that I was the one inflicting such pain.
On my sister’s recommendation I invested a small fortune in Mustela products, specially formulated for extremely sensitive and irritated skin, and I started tracking down non-chemical sunscreens and sun protective clothing. After five days of daily baths with the magic soap and twice daily slathering of the miracle lotion
, Little L is no longer covered in little red dots and her skin no longer feels scaly. Which is good, because ew. Even better she no longer screams when I put her in the tub, nor does she scratch her belly while plaintively moaning “ouchie.”
Tomorrow we’re going to be taking the non-chemical sunscreen for it’s first test drive, and I’m not going to pretend that I’m not feeling nauseous at the thought. If I could protect her from the sun without ever using sunscreen again I’d be much happier, but all that sun protective clothing is hot, and it’s just not always the most practical option. So tomorrow I’m going to pull out Little L’s new unbelievably expensive sunscreen and I’m going to close my eyes and apply it to her skin while uttering a million wishes that she doesn’t react to it, or the sun, or anything else she comes into contact with, so we can get on with the important tasks of summer, like playing in the pool, going for walks, or hanging at the beach.