Mum Shares Warning After Her Toddler Nearly Lost His Eyes From Playing With Bath Toys

A mum has shared a confronting post warning other parents to throw out their bath toys after her young son almost lost his eyes from playing with them in the bath.

Posting her story to social media, Eden Strong worked up the courage to share the images of her son Baylor’s severe bacterial eye infection, stating that they are “so gross” that she “wasn’t sure anyone would want to see” them. But, the mother said that this is something that she wished she had known, so she knew she was doing the right thing in warning other parents.

“I knew water could get trapped in tub toys, particularly the rubber ones designed to squirt water. I’ve seen the posts where mums 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.

“However, I didn’t know that even with regular bleach cleaning, the fact that they never fully dry on the inside means that bacteria can still grow. Invisible bacteria.

““Baylor squirted himself in the eye with a tub toy,” our nanny told me one day as I passed them coming out of the bathroom and noticed his eye was a little bit red. 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 when I put him in his high chair that night for dinner and noticed that his eye looked even redder than it had earlier, I had my husband run him over to urgent care, assuming he had pink eye.”

“The doctor agreed and I patted myself on the back a bit for being so attentive. 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.

“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.”

“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 2:30am.

“When he woke up at 6am and I laid eyes on him in his crib, I screamed to my husband to get in the car. 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. Despite having another child with epilepsy and therefore being pretty good at keeping my cool, I cried the entire drive to a larger hospital, praying that he wouldn’t lose his eye.”

“IV antibiotics were started almost as soon as we walked through the hospital doors and because of the significant swelling, a CT scan was done to check his retina.

“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.”

“But tub toys? THROW THEM OUT. You cannot clean them, you just can’t. I don’t have any moldy tub toy pictures to show here, because there was never any visible mold to take a picture of. You can’t see bacteria and I’ve known that since 6th grade science class but I thought I was better than dirty tub toys. I was wrong.

“So those tub toys? Just throw them out.”

Most families entertain their children in the bath with soft plastic bath toys. Squeezing the water out is one of the most fun things to do with them!

Several parents shared similar stories on Eden’s Facebook post, highlighting how dangerous these toys can be. Others described the way they covered the holes in similar toys with a hot glue gun, blocking any chance that they might collect water and form mold.

Happily, brave little Baylor has fully recovered and his eyes are just as stunning as they were before his scary mishap.