baby with eye infection - any advice?

[jinglesticks]

10 mo dd has nasty eye infection. She has antibiotics and gp said to wash regularly with boiled water. She hates the drops and the washing and screams and its so hard to do! Can't hold her head and arms and the drops at the same time. She also hates the washing but it needs doing every hours or so or they get crusted shut.

Any advice for washing/applying drops? Or anything else I can do? she is waking up with her eyes crusted shut and its really hard to clean, especially while she screams and struggles!

A friend said I should was her eyes with breastmilk but this sounds dodgy to me as milk can breed infection really easily can't it?

Nope, breastmilk is fantastic for eye infections. my GP suggested it before prescribing antibiotics and it worked

Hi Jingle,

My DS (8m) had an eye infection this week and getting the drops in and cleaning in not easy, i am a childrens nurse and luckily have picked up some tips along the way! the best thing do is get a big blanket or towel and swaddle those wriggly arms and legs! sit on the floor with your legs out in front of you and bub's head between your legs make sure you clean from the inside of the eye to the outside and never wipe using the same peice of cotton wool to aviod re-infection. it is horrible doing it but its a case of being cruel to be kind! HTH x

Also agreeing with breast milk. It's a very common recommendation and breastmilk has natural antibacterial properties.

I second the breastmilk treatment! I did it with ds and it worked brilliantly. Breastmilk is sterile.

YY to breast milk

I've never done the breast milk trick but I have heard it's very good. Putting the drops in is really horrible but I figure it's a minute of pain for a lot of gain. DD had horrible conjunctivitis last week and I gave her some brolene drops. I only needed to give her four doses before it completely cleared up. I did have to pin her down to put them in but I gave her lots of cuddles afterwards and she did calm down quickly afterwards.

Definitely try the BM, it has anti-bacterial and anti-viral properties.