Hand Foot and Mouth

So I've been out of it for the last week because Chiquita got hand foot & mouth.  I was surprised at the different levels of awareness among my mommy friends.  Some knew all about it & others had never heard of it, so I thought I'd make a few more people aware.

These are sores on her leg after a few days.

It's highly contagious but like most disease you don't know they have it until they've had a chance to spread it around. I got helpful information from the CDC website.

Her poor little feet.  She kept walking fine though!

Basically, it's a virus that mainly affects children 5 and under (however hubby got a mild case too) and the first sign is a fever.  Chiquita had a 102.4 fever Thursday night.  The fever went away by morning and I thought she was better so unfortunately I took her out and she probably infected other kids (sorry!).  The next symptom is red bumps and blisters inside their mouth, on the hands, feet and bum. They might get them all these place or just a few, they might have lots of blister or just a couple.  I saw one or two Friday morning but thought it was heat rash from the fever.  By nighttime there were more bumps and by Saturday morning I'd decided she had chicken pox.  I forgot she was already vaccinated against that, we didn't have vaccines when I was a kid (do I sound like a parent yet?).  Anyway, I took her to the doctor and found out about hand, foot and mouth.  Since then we've been home watching lots of cartoons.  Kids are most contagious the first week but even after they get all better they still might be contagious!!  We're only doing this containment thing for a week though because both of us are going nuts.

We found that besides ibuprofen for the fever and pain that Neosporin with pain reliever seemed to help.  Her mouth wasn't too bad, some kids stop drinking and eating and then you've got a whole other problem on your hands. My little Chiquita can't always tell me what's going on so we did the best we could.  No fun!

As if this wasn't enough she got crazy hives and Mommy finally figured out she's allergic to her favorite food, strawberries.  I actually watched the hives appear on her face as she ate a strawberry.  So sad.