rash Archives - Going Dad

Have you ever been slapped in the face by a virus? I don’t recall ever having parvovirus b19 lay a ~~finger~~ dna strand on my face as a kid, but apparently it’s a common infection.

Earlier last week, our little girl had a few minor signs of a runny nose and unexplained crankiness which I think might be from a headache. At the end of the week, she was developing a little rash on her body and some on her cheeks.

The next day, that little rash exploded all over her body, was warm to the touch, and left our poor toddler with an extremely red and swollen face as if she had been slapped hard on both cheeks.

parvovirus b19, virus, fifth disease, slapped cheek, infection

As it turns out, this is called slapped-cheek disease aka fifth disease, which is said to be quite common in kids. Seeing my daughter covered in a bright red rash is bad enough, but her swollen hamster-like cheeks simply hurt my heart. Every time I look at the picture above, I feel that sunken feeling in my heart and stomach wishing I could make it all go away.

I’m usually the good one at maintaining composure when our child is sick, so you can only imagine how distraught my wife was all weekend. She was filled with constant concern and made sure to keep Avery happy as much as possible. Despite her ailments, Avery was her happy toddler self running around yapping about certain anatomy along with singing the intro to Little Einsteins at the top of her lungs. Kinda like this pic, but with a rash and swollen face.

virus, happy, parvovirus b19, fifth disease

She was scratching the rash, but Going Mom and was good about keeping her mind occupied with lots of reading and playing.

Avery with fifth disease virus_reading

Cousin Ashlee also spent the night and they had a blast playing together, so that helped tremendously!

All weekend long, the symptoms of the virus plagued our sweet girl. We were more concerned about the infection and mild fever than she was, but it sucked nonetheless. As I write this, we are on day 3 since the rash appeared and slapped her face, and I’m happy to say it’s slowly going away. Her swollen face is slowly returning to normal and the rash, while still all around her arms, legs, and back, has lessened.

With fifth disease, there really is no treatment other than letting it run its course. We’re doing just that and are thankful it hasn’t dampened her spirits one bit.

Have you, your kids, or someone you know ever had fifth disease?

Did you see lots of swelling in the face too?

Guess we celebrated Avery’s recovery too soon. No more fever, but she started to develop a rash on her lower belly. It was good to see she was back to being active, but her eating was and still is not up to par.

Despite what it looks like in the picture, Avery was not scratching at or even acknowledging her spreading rash. But, Going Mom did enough worrying for the both of them and was worriedly searching Dr. Google for an answer.

Since it was the weekend and the rash didn’t seem severe enough to act immediately, I said we should just wait until Monday and reassess then. My wife, still showing signs of concern, as any loving mother would, agreed to give it time. Meanwhile, she used several forms of home remedies/treatments in hopes the rash would suddenly disappear.

Coconut oil and her homemade solution of essential oils to diffuse may or may not of helped, but her rash was hardly visible by Monday. Phew! Kelley took off from work and neither of us wanted to spend her day off going to the doctor for our poor daughter’s rash. It had already been a long, stressful week for Avery, and an impromptu visit to the doc would only add to it!

In other news, Avery started undoing her cloth diaper again. This happened a few months ago and we used packaging tape as the solution. The tape sucked and fell off easily, so we’ve upgraded to duct tape which seems to work much better.

duct tape cloth diaper — So it’s come to this…..

Or so we thought…..

Apparently you have to duct tape all around or Avery will simply just pull the tape right off. Smart girl. Now she gets duct tape full circle around her cloth diaper.

Like any toddler, she doesn’t make it easy, but handing her the roll helps keep her still long enough just to make sure everything’s secure.

Once she’s all wrapped up, she then likes to get down to rap.

Okay, not really rap, but that’s the only thing that would work for my corny dad pun/joke. So sue me! Actually,please don’t. 🙂

Besides the mystery rash and finicky eating, we had a great family weekend together. Even though Avery didn’t have a fever, I think it was best we didn’t bring her to our friend’s kids’ 2 year old birthday party since she hasn’t been 100% quite yet and we didn’t know whether the rash would spread or not. Instead, we enjoyed playtime and coffee during the day, and a lot of The Walking Dead after Avery’s bedtime.

Seriously, we are hooked for the long haul and almost to season 4 at this point. It’s bad when we set a limit of 2 episodes and end up watching 2 more. The crazy life of parents with a toddler, huh? That said, I enjoy having a good show to get into with my wife, and it’s nice to stay off of the computer and watch something good with her instead.

Really quick before I wrap things up, I went on an hour long run in my new Soft Star Shoes Dash RunAmocs with a bullhide leather sole and find these better than my Moc3’s I reviewed previously. I’ll have a full review of the Dash RunAmocs eventually, but will be running a half-marathon in them on Mother’s Day before publishing anything. Until then, I’ll keep wearing my Soft Stars and Avery will wear hers as we exercise and play together each day!