Thursday, May 15, 2008

Prince Purplemouth

Thrush is a fun yeast infection that babies can get in their mouths. It creates white splotches on the tongue and/or inside of the cheeks/lips. Chickie has had it twice, and Zoodle has had it once...for the last 5 weeks or so.

Treating thrush can be tricky. The drug most commonly prescribed is Nystatin. It has a lot of sugar in it, though, and yeast feeds on sugar. So sometimes it doesn't work. Then there's gentian violet, a natural remedy which is highly effective in most cases, but stains the mouth dark purple. I recently heard of a third possibility, grapefruit seed extract (GSE), which has to be used more often than gentian violet, but is colorless.

So we've been using the GSE for five weeks. Problem is, I am not using it HOURLY during waking hours, as is required. That's hard! So we can't seem to zap the last little bit of the thrush.

Finally today, I gave in and used gentian violet.

Photobucket

My little Prince Purplemouth! Problem is, it stains saliva and spit-up purple, too, so now my lovely Miracle Blanket, the burp cloth, and Zoodle's new shirt (and probably soon my shirt) all have purple on them. I've heard Oxy Clean gets it out. We'll see.

This better work quickly, because I hate that my month-and-a-half old baby boy looks like I've been feeding him bright purple lollipops!!

5 comments:

Kristi said...

Ugh! I'm sorry you're having to deal with thrush, but I have to say that "Prince Purplemouth" is adorable....purple mouth and all! And, Beth, we all know you DO give him lollies, so don't try to pass it off as medicine! :P

Anonymous said...

I also used gentian violet with my first child and accidentally spilled the bottle on the carpet, ugh! What a mess. Spot Shot actually got it all out without a trace, it can be used for upoholstry and carpets and for laundry. I have not found anything that it does not get out. Good luck!

headscratching said...

How does the violet taste? i'd really like to do this before i go to my next rave, but not if the taste is going to be a buzzkill.

C. Beth said...

Ha, Sean! I think it's tasteless, so go to town!

LEstes65 said...

Poor little prince. He's adorable no matter what color his tongue is. I sent you an email about this, too. Get those probiotics in you, momma. They'll get to him through the nursing.