I Want To Go To There: Staph Is The Worst!!!

Sooo... after Dallas was born and we had come home from the hospital life started to get a little crazy. I noticed in the middle of the night that Dallas had a blister on the inside of his mouth. I thought it was weird but I figured that it must be totally common as he and I were trying to figure out this whole nursing thing. I called the pediatricians office the next day to ask them about it and to see if I should let him take a little break from nursing to let it heal. I was surprised to learn that they were kinda concerned about it. They asked me if I could drive to Glendale to see them. I thought they were just being overly cautious so I declined and said I would keep an eye on it and if it lasted longer than a couple days then I would just come in. They even called me back that day to check on it and I told them nothing was worse and that I thought he was fine.

Fast forward to the next weekend when Pen told me one night that her tummy hurt. I thought she was just trying to come up with an excuse to not go to bed but the next morning I noticed that her tummy was really red and had started to form blisters. I completely freaked out. We were set to fly up to Washington to surprise my parents for the 20th anniversary of being at Grace Bible Church in Marysville, so I decided to send Jona in with Pen to Urgent Care. I was absolutely certain it was chicken pox even though she had received the vaccination. They got home and Jona said that she had a staph infection. I had only heard of staph from when Rosie O'Donnell got it from a nail salon haha, so I had no idea what it was and the more I researched the more I was nervous.

I started to read that staph manifests itself in newborns in blisters and also in whats called "scaling skin" syndrome and all of the sudden it hit me that Dallas had it too. He had a bad diaper rash and his little skin was peeling and he was totally raw. I immediately called my pediatrician and they had us come in first thing the next morning. They confirmed that both kids had staph and that Dallas had most likely gotten it first from the hospital. Dallas had a really easy mild case but Pen's was a bit worse. Since hers was a little more widespread they tested hers and put her on a really strong antibiotic just in case it was the MRSA strain (which it ended up not being). They told us that after 24 hours she would only be contagious if you someone came in contact with an open sore so we bandaged her up like crazy and started the antibiotic. They told us we were good to go on our trip but we were pretty nervous.

Our trip was great (more on that later), but daily I was calling into the pediatrician because I was seeing all of these blotches show up on Penny's little body. It was like these weird skin dye rashes just kept coming up. I kept describing it to them and they had no idea what was happening and just told us to come in when we got home. The weird thing about it was that they kept saying that if it was staph then Penny would be feverish and not feel well and she wouldn't have much of an appetite. Penny was the exact opposite. She was having the time of her life and didn't act or look sick for a second.

I know I'm dragging this out forever but we finally got home and took her into the doctor's office immediately. The doctor said that both kid's staph infections were completely gone but she didn't know what was going on with Penny. She said she needed to leave the room to think about it. Jona and I were kinda freaking out after she was gone for 20 minutes! She finally came back and told us that Penny had an adverse reaction to the antibiotic and that it had dyed her skin. The major bummer was that her skin would probably be dyed like that for the rest of her life. We were so relieved but as I thought about it more it really made me so sad that this would always be on Pen's body. When she gets hot or tan it shows up much stronger but really isn't horrible. We are also SO thankful that its not on her face!

I realize this is probably WAY more than anyone wants to read about our family's encounter with staph but it was seriously so traumatic and I am SO thankful that it is over!!