1 year old with a sticky eye, should I take him to nursery tomorrow?

[Icoulddoitbetter]

Hi,

My DS has a very gunky right eye today. It's a bit red, but very sticky. It doesn't seem to be bothering him much thankfully. I've bathed it in cooled boiled water and tried to put a bit of breast milk on it earlier but he got cross! I'll do it again before bed.

So my question is, what is the chance of it being conjunctivitis, and if I take him to nursery tomorrow do you think they'll refuse to keep him / call me later to come and get him? We're novices at this nursery lark, and I don't think I've ever seen conjuntivitis before either!,

TIA

[lljkk]

Nursery will refuse him, go see a GP and take their advice. That said, I usually ride CJ out (especially bacterial CJ, I don't clean it or give any drops, which I think is now conventional advice for mild cases, hahaha after years of being told off on MN for that). I find it goes away by itself in 3-7 days, but you may not want to wait it out.

See what GP says, I bet it will be much worse tomorrow and GP will prescribe drops and you will prefer to use them.

[Icoulddoitbetter]

Thanks for that, do you think it's more than likely Conjun. then? Wouldn't it be sore and bothering him?

Would the general consensus be that nursery will refuse him? DH reckons he (DH)gets this all the time (I've never seen it....!) and that I should I should take him anyway (I have no desire to infect other children, believe me, but we only started nursery last week so haven't had any experience of what is and what's not turned away yet).

[lljkk]

It may not bother them much especially if bacterial.
CJ can be viral: just red eyes, no or barely any gunk and quite painful and fairly contagious, or bacterial: oozy gunk and not so painful and not so contagious, or both viral and bacterial.

Every nursery will have a policy of turning away children with apparent conjunctivitis. They'll probably only let him back if you say it's being treated and there's no eye gunk.

Best way to prevent it is to keep them from wiping snot into their own eyes, btw, but easier said than done.

[lavenderlois]

Check with your nursery (if you haven't already done so) - my DD's nursery no longer turns away kids with gunky eyes, in line with revised govt policy apparently.

[bornorg]

sounds like conjunctivitis. My son got turned away from school when he had this unless he brought drops with him. you ca just go straight to the pharmacy and get advice. also when I was BFing i found that brest milk did the trick.