Baby Clearasil? Anything?

Alex is 14 days old today. In honour of this special day, her face exploded.

As any good mother would do when her child's face explodes, I called the pediatrician. I told her about Alex's exploding face.

"Oh, that's perfectly normal," she said.

I hate it when doctors act calm, especially in light of an obvious catastrophe.

"It's baby acne," she continued. "It's caused by excess hormones in the newborn transferred from the birthmother prior to and during delivery. She's fine."

That's easy for her to say. Her daughter's face hasn't erupted with angry-looking little pustules, caused by someone else's hormones coursing through her little body. She calls it "normal baby acne." To me, it's verging on demonic possession.

But, as you know by now, I'm a professional. I calmly and reasonably say to the doctor, in a controlled voice: "Well, doctor, despite your obvious confidence, this 'baby acne' is eating my daughter's face. How can we cure this?"

"Well," she said, in her soft, sweet-natured way, "the best way to handle this is time. It'll go away on its own. It's totally normal."

Great. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm not a particularly patient person. I'm troubled by the fact that in this day and age when we can build space stations and clone sheep, we can't figure out how to eradicate the plague which has taken hold of my little girl with anything stronger than "time." I'm living in the country that brought the world the space shuttle, the transistor and the supercomputer, and the best this woman can give me is TIME??

Luckily, Alex does not share my relentless insistence on immediacy. The truth is, the little bumps don't seem bother her in the least. Her temperature's normal, she's not in pain, and actually doesn't seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. As a matter of fact, as I type, she's looking at me with a sort of "what are you ON about?" expression on her face.

An expression strikingly similar to her father's.

Comments

[Jen Bradley]

Okay, when this happened to Maddie I thought it must be something in my house...some sort of looming evil mite of sorts. So I was up until 3am on the day it literally blossomed, because it kinda happens like that, bleaching every surface in my house, removing blinds bleaching them and hosing them down on the deck at this point by dim wattage outdoor lighting...So the next day, I was relieved to discover it was normal and would disapper in time...about 2 weeks total. So I put cute hats on her and limited my film processing! When it happened to John-John I barely even noticed. Your little angel is beautiful and you're doing everything right, Mom!

Much love to all,
John, Jen, Maddie, and John-John (aka terrible two's in action!)

P.S. The Baby Book by Dr. Sears is the BEST!

[Tamra]

I hate baby acne too. I always forget and try and do black and white photos at that time. They always turn out so bad! Luckily it will go away soon!

[frog]

Okay, Dr. Sears scares me. A lot. Just FYI and FWIW, as I don't actually have small people living in my home or anything.