4 week old baby - severe sunburn

[LittleNoona]

AIBU to be utterly shocked?

Just seen this reported - a 4 week old baby has been rushed to a specialist burns unit suffering from severe sunburn.

This particular burns unit has treated many under 14's for sunburn serious enough to need specialist treatment.

There is no excuse for this that I can fathom, no excuse at all.

The poor mite could have died.

I saw a tiny premature baby with a tube in its nose sitting on mums lap in a pub garden in the blazing sun, totally naked no hat or shade

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1281274/Mother-badly-sunburnt-baby-says-mortified.html

A baby's palm is 1% of their body surface. Its a tiny part of them that got burnt. You can burn in the shade, baby skin is so much more than sensitive than an adults. Plus being told not to use suncream under age one, by health professionals. I can see exactly how this happened. I imagine the parents will be beating themselves up with guilt for a long time.

Must be nice to be as perfect a parent as so many of you.

That wasn't the story I saw?

Hop, it's not about being a perfect parent, it's about having common sense ffs.

Dear god

And common sense says keep your baby in the shade. Oh, except that doesn't work. So what, you stay housebound?

No it's a different one. Who got burnt on the palm? I think burns can happen when the sun is this hot even if precautions taken and we don't know the details of the case of the 4 week old but I didn't think much of what I saw regarding the tiny baby

How does it not work? I absolutely do not stay housebound and I've never managed to burn either of my children. How strange

The recent story was saying that a baby suffered burns on between 0.5 and 4% of their body, I was saying how big a baby's palm is to illustrate how small an area that actually is.

I don't get how shade doesn't work either, none have mine have been burnt either and I'm always out with them, I do try and avoid the midday sun though

I get you now HopAlongon, sorry

Sunlight gets reflected off surfaces, baby's skin is very sensitive, so while you think they are in the shade, they can get burnt from the reflections from things like a sun parasol.

my toddler burnt the back of his arm because he was struggling while I reapplied the cream and I must have missed a bit. I am vigilant about hats and cream as we are all pale and ginger, and we stick to the shade mostly, and it STILL happened. I'll go sit on the "shouldn't have had a kid FFS" bench then.

Yy to the point about jaundiced babies being put in the sun up thread, I'd say thats what happened, and they just didnt realise how quickly a baby would burn :(

I don't agree that if your child gets accidentally burnt you shouldn't have a child that's awful

Must be nice to be as perfect a parent as so many of you.

Yep, I'm with you, HopAlongOn. I'll join you on that bench.

When i was 12, i was sitting in my back garden on a sunny day for no longer than 15 minutes then i got called in for dinner.

That evening, my arms swelled up to three times their normal size. Huge blisters the size of eggs - i shit you not - emerged on my shoulders.

I got taken to A+E and was told my burns were horrific. The doctor couldn't believe i'd been sitting out for only 15 minutes.

My shoulders are still badly scarred to this day.

Basically, my point is that some people are highly sensitive to the sun.

This could have been a first time mum - totally alien to the world of sun safety.

I'm using factor 50 at the mo and i still resemble a tomato!

Honestly, when I see the way so many grown up people let themselves get sunburned - it's appalling and it's not surprising that people let it happen to their little ones as well.

It can be social pressure too - I lead a very limited social life with my children, but the other day I got talking to a man I barely knew, (he knew my parents) and we were in the street, in the full sun and I kept wanting to move the baby but couldn't see anywhere easy to move him to without breaking off conversation and sounding rude (he kept talking, I could barely get a word in)

I can see how easily it can happen that people are in company and just feel awkward or embarrassed saying 'I need/my baby needs to go in the shade now'. Especially when there is so much judgment about being 'PFB' .

Poor little thing. I hope it is going to be alright.

I hope if you are going to be sitting on a bench you try not to get burnt!

We are going to indoor soft play today because its just too sunny to be outside.

I'm going to dig myself and my family a bunker.

Also it's probably a bit like the snow effect we have here in the UK. We're so not used to it happening that when it does, we can't deal with it. We're not prepared for really hot weather, in the same way we're not prepared for really cold....the only thing we're prepared for is drizzle.

Many years ago when my brother was a boy, his friends parents took him with them to the beach. We were not well off but did have a bottle of sunscreen to do the whole family. My mum applied some before he left but had to keep the bottle for the rest of us (i'm one of 7). She assumed that the parents would top him up when they did their own kids. Unfortunately the family had the type of skin that tanned easily and given this was the 1970s, didn't bother with cream themselves so my red haired, freckled brother spent the day on the beach with one application of probably factor 8 as you didn't get much stronger then I think.

He came home and had to go to hospital with severe burns and massive blisters :(

My parents were neither stupid or unloving, just poor and busy.

I hope the baby is okay, it does sound like it was a bit that was missed and caught the sun rather than not taking any care at all.