Another hat I wear...

I often think about all the "hats" I wear in my role as a mommy. Sometimes I'm a chef, other times I'm a chauffeur. I frequently act as a referee between Kaden and Noah, and I personally consider myself to be the world's best secretary and personal assistant who keeps everything (and everyone) in order! Well, over the course of the past week, I have added a new hat to my repertoire: I am now a wound care nurse!

For those of you who follow our family on Facebook, you probably already know that Noah was diagnosed with Impetigo last week at his 15 month well checkup. Impetigo is a skin infection that is caused by the staph bacteria. Kids can get it in a number of ways, and we really don't know how Noah contracted it; possibly by getting into some poison ivy that later turned into the infection or even from his frequent eczema breakouts. Regardless of how he got it, he has been absolutely miserable. The skin on his hands and feet looked like they were dipped into a vat of acid. They were broken and bleeding and just looked like they had been burned. Needless to say, nobody was getting any sleep as this infection was keeping him up itching and in pain every night.

So anyway... when we went in for his checkup, his amazing pediatrician Dr. Rickenmann determined that he had Impetigo. We are treating it with two different forms of antibiotics: one is an ointment that has to be applied to his skin 3x a day and the other is an oral antibiotic that is given 2x a day. On top of applying the ointment multiple times a day, I am also having to wrap his hands and feet (the most badly infected areas) so that he will not scratch them and risk spreading the infection to the rest of his body. This has been very interesting because, as I'm sure you can imagine, it is nearly impossible to wrap anything on a squirmy baby! It's taken a few days, but I've finally gotten it down. It is definitely a very involved process, and I have to plan everything out and get all the materials ready before I get started. It makes me appreciate all the work Patrick does everytime he has a procedure at work because I know he has to be a LOT more careful at work than I'm probably being. That said, we are about halfway through the treatment, and hopefully on Saturday we will be done with this! Thanks for all the prayers for our sweet baby. We are praying that once he shakes this infection he will stay well for awhile!

Here is Noah before starting antibiotic treatments. You can really see the Impetigo lesions on his knees, hands, feet, and face

Here's my little baby all wrapped up... you can't really see in this picture, but his feet are wrapped too.