A mum has issued a terrifying warning to fellow parents after her son was almost blinded by a bath toy.
For most young children, bath time isn't fun unless they have their favourite toys to play with in the water, but it turns out they could be more dangerous than we thought.
Mum of three, Eden Strong, took to Facebook to warn other families about the hidden dangers bath toys pose to children - especially ones which hold water inside - after her son Baylor, was almost blinded by the dirty water inside a toy.
https://www.facebook.com/EdenStrongNotMyShame/photos/pcb.3498610956867854/3498581880204095/
She wrote, 'I’ve seen the posts where mom’s have cut them open and discovered a ridiculous amount of mould 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 mould.'
Despite having cleaned the toys thoroughly with bleach, she was unaware that the toys are rarely ever dry, and this allows deadly bacteria to form inside them.
One bath time incident saw Baylor squirt himself in the eye with water that was trapped inside the toy, and his eye became sore.
https://www.facebook.com/EdenStrongNotMyShame/photos/pcb.3498610956867854/3498583420203941
Eden explained, "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."
But as his eye worsened, Eden rushed him to hospital where he was diagnosed with pink eye - which is a term given to the inflammation or infection of the transparent membrane that lines your eyelid and eyeball.
He was given eye drops but when Eden went to give him an additional dose during the night, she made an alarming discovery as he was sleeping.
She said, '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...I immediately wondered if he might be developing cellulitis, and so off to the ER we went.'
https://www.facebook.com/EdenStrongNotMyShame/photos/pcb.3498610956867854/3498584853537131
With an eye looking painful enough to make baby Baylor cry, he was prescribed antibiotics and had a CT scan to check his retina wasn't damaged.
'His eye was so swollen that the white part was bulging out from between his eyelid and his iris was being obscured,' said Eden.
'He felt hot to the touch and a temperature check showed that he had a raging fever.'
https://www.facebook.com/EdenStrongNotMyShame/photos/pcb.3498610956867854/3498588490203434
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.'
Urging fellow parents to ditch their old bathroom toys, Eden added, 'Bath tub toys? THROW THEM OUT. You cannot clean them, you just can’t.'
