On her Facebook page, Eden Strong explained that she was already aware of how easy it is for mold to build up in bath toys and would always squeeze the water out after every bath. Eden Strong rushed her son Baylor after water from a dirty bath toy almost blinded him.
The American mother of three wrote: “I’ve seen the posts where moms have cut them open and discovered a ridiculous amount of mold inside. I knew.
“So I squeezed them out after each bath, cleaned them out every few weeks with a bleach water solution, and regularly held them up to the light to look for mold.”
But despite her treating them with bleach, Eden didn’t know that bacteria could still grow inside the toys as they’re rarely ever dry.
Earlier this year, Eden’s nanny told her that her toddler Baylor had squirted himself in the eye with one of the bath toys.
At first, Baylor’s eye was only slightly red and irritated.
The mom originally thought the water pressure from the toy was to blame.
At first, the mom didn’t panic because his eye was only slightly red, and she couldn’t see any mold in the toys.
She continued: “I figured it was just irritated from the water, or maybe the pressure of the water, and so I didn’t think much of it.”
By that evening, Baylor’s eye was noticeably even more red, and so Eden’s husband rushed him to the hospital as they feared he’d developed pink eye.
“The doctor agreed, and I patted myself on the back a bit for being so attentive,” Eden wrote. “He got his first dose of eye drops, and because I was already priding myself on being attentive, I decided to give him a booster dose in the middle of the night just to assure he would be feeling better by morning.”
At first, doctors thought Baylor had pink eye.
At one point, Baylor couldn’t even close his eye.
After he was diagnosed with cellulitis, the infection spread to both eyes.
But during the night, Baylor’s eye got much much worse – and Eden is grateful she checked on him.
The mom recalled: “I wasn’t expecting to find him in his crib with an eye twice the size as it was when he went to bed, with redness spreading down his cheek.
“As a bit of an internet medical guru, I immediately wondered if he might be developing cellulitis, and so off to the ER we went.
“There, another doctor once again agreed with my diagnosis and wrote him a prescription for oral antibiotics, which we filled and gave him at 2:30 am.”
But at 6 am, Baylor’s eye had swollen so much that he couldn’t even close it – and the terrified parents raced him back to the hospital.
Fearing her son was going to lose his eye, Eden wrote: “His eye was so swollen that the white part was bulging out from between his eyelid, and his iris was being obscured.
“He felt hot to the touch, and a temperature check showed that he had a raging fever.”
When they arrived back at A&E, Baylor was immediately given antibiotics and had to have a CT scan to check his retina wasn’t damaged.
Eden continued: “The next week was pretty scary. He had severe cellulitis that eventually spread down his face and to both eyes.
“They warned me that he may lose vision in the worse eye, but in the end, thank the Lord his eyes healed.”
Fortunately, Baylor didn’t lose his eyes.