Baby-Soft Skin and Other Mythological Things

First, a housekeeping issue.  Some of you may notice that I deleted the post on my feelings about breastfeeding.  There are two reasons for this:

1) After I got done being on my soapbox and was somewhat less hormonal emotional, I realized that post was entirely not in line with my intended purpose for this blog in that it had everything to do with me being opinionated and very little to do with Leah, and

2) The comments on that post were a wankfest that resulted in the dissolution of a relationship that meant a lot to me.  While valid points were made on both sides that directly related to the post, a lot of personal comments were also made, and I did not feel those belonged in a public forum.

Now.  Moving on.

Over the last week or so, Leah has developed what I refer to as "an unfortunate skin condition."  First her cheeks were extra rosy and a little dry, and we grouped it in with the rest of her skin, which was also going through a molting of sorts which All The Books assured us was completely normal in the first weeks of life.  We put lotion on her and called it good.  Then her scalp started to look funny and there were little red dots on her face, and people started to ask questions - "Are you sure it's nothing to be concerned about?"  (Note: If you want to shake a new parent's confidence, there is no better way to do that than to ask if we're sure our child is normal.)  We decided, based on a quick consultation with Dr. Google, that Leah was suffering from cradle cap and baby acne.  Though unfortunate, both Dr. Google and her actual doctor assured us that both conditions a) were common and b) would go away on their own, though there were home remedies we could certainly try.  We set about applying baby oil to her scalp and washing her face more regularly.

Then one day, very early in the morning after I'd been up most of the night, I looked at my little girl and realized that the yellow scaliness from her scalp had migrated south and now covered the entirety of her face, her neck, her chest and her upper back.

I completely lost my shit.

I scheduled a same-day appointment with the pediatrician, where the very nice doctor did a very good job of not patronizing me as she told me to CTFD.  This, too, was relatively common, was not harmful to her and would go away on its own if left untreated.  However, since it was clearly bothering me (and who wouldn't be bothered by their newborn child suddenly developing the skin of a reptile?), there was a cream that we could put on her face to speed up the healing process, make her skin less irritated and, in general, bring our perfect baby back to us sooner.

I have no delusions that Leah will grow up to be a model.  She is doomed by heredity to suffer through years of acne that will inevitably leave her with scarred skin for all of her life.  I just figured I had a good 12 years of confidence-building before that happened.

After five days of treatment, I'm pleased to report that Leah's "normal" baby skin is returning, though she does smell vaguely like cheese and the condition tends to leave yellow stains on her clothes as though she's the world's youngest smoker.  I didn't take pictures, but I did find this blog entry by someone else that made me feel a million times better and more normal about everything that we've been seeing.  As the saying goes, "misery loves company."

Here is where my baby girl starts to distinguish herself from a potato.  I would not freak the hell out if one day I got out my potato and noticed it had yellow shit growing all over it.  I would just toss the potato and get a new one.

Babies are sort of not like that.  The law tends to frown on people who cannot make this differentiation.