Unbelievable! Sudocrem and attitude!

[woadie]

Hi all,

I've been a member of mumsnet for just a short while, and generally I don't feel the need to speak out, preferring to read. Most of my questions have been asked before so I always find excellent advice from the Mums in here just by looking through threads :)

This, though, I have to share!

My daughter (mow 11 months) discovered she could get the lid of the sudocrem a couple of months ago. She also decided to dip her hand in and take a nice big mouthful of the stuff before we could grab her. Sudocrem everwhere and a good amount noshed off. We would have taken this as a one-off incident but she did it again. Both times we piled up to the doctor and both times, yes she had side effects.

She will try to grab whatever nappy rash cream we have to hand. Luckily for us, it's only the sudocrem she can get the lid off, and it's only the sudocrem she seems to favour wanting to eat. Less luckily for us, we like the sudocrem best!

So, we scooped the sudocrem into a jamjar with a good screw on lid, and I decided to contact Sudocrem to tell them what happened and point out that their pot design is a bit rubbish for our child (who I would take as a pretty average baby/toddler).

Their reply was basically to keep the pot away from her (doh! yes I think as a mum I know that one, but we all know nappy change time!). But more to the point, my daughter was then sujected to a lab-rat set of questions with very shallow apology but plenty of interest in side effects.

I was pretty disgusted and decided just not to reply to their email but today I got a second one from the same lab person, again requesting info:

"Further to my email, I am writing to follow-up the incident whereby your 11 month old daughter ingested Sudocrem Antiseptic Healing Cream on two occasions. I sincerely hope she is well and has fully recovered from both events.

It is our duty to follow-up such medication errors, and I would be most grateful if you could provide us with the following information for our safety records:

(1) Your address, or if you do not wish us to have this detail, the geographical area in which you reside.

(2) The initials of your daughter.

(3) How much of the 125g pot of Sudocrem do you think she managed to eat on each occasion? Also, do you happen to know the dates of these events?

(4) Did your daughter suffer any side-effects from the ingestion of Sudocrem Antiseptic Healing Cream? Has she fully recovered?

(5) Did you take her to the doctor? If so, what was the outcome?

I thank you in advance for your time and co-operation regarding this matter. Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best wishes (name)"

Now, am I right to feel so utterly ANGRY about this?!!!! My daughter is the most precious thing in tjhe world to me, and much as I wqould hate any other parents children to suffer through sudocrem ingestion, I do not wish my child to be seem as some lab-rat to add to their case studies!!!! As much as anything, it was the whole tone of this that set my teeth on edge.

What do you think?

By the way, my daughter had runny poos for days after each ingestion, much as the doctor said she would, so eating sudocrem isn't something I would like her to do again.

Thanks for reading :)

On a slightly different point shirleyknot my DD was just like yours - loved to eat sudocrem (what is it about sudocrem?) and once ate most of a large pot before we caught her. We were living in France at the time so called their version of Poison Control.

We were told that there are no ingredients that could cause her harm, except one (I forget which) which could harm her ability to absorbe sugars temporarily. We were told to give her a 3 spoonfuls of sugar mixed with water to compensate. No side effects and she was fine... although continued to try hard to sneek a mouthful whenever I was changing her...

god, I thought it was just mine that had a taste for the stuff
though its normally out his reach and hes never ingested a significant ammount

I was just glad he wasnt chewing electrical cables tbh

YABU - as others have said, Sudocrem is licensed as a medicine in the UK, and ANY adverse events have to be followed up (whether they are 'expected' or 'unexpected', i.e. have been seen before in other patients or are new) and this information is compiled and used to determine what warning labels need to go on products. It is for patient safety and I think this is fundamentally a good thing. The advantage of it having licensed status is that the product is made to specific quality standards. They don't ask these questions for marketing purposes.

My dc saw the sudocreme pot as a challenge, and I admit they both had their turns at getting hold of it and smearing it into anything close enough!

I used to change nappies sitting on the floor and kept the tub of cream behind me, I never had any bother at nappy changing time with them grabbing the cream usualy it was my own fault for not putting it away!

My ds used to wipe I off his bum when I just put it on and then lick his fingers he suffered no I'll effect!

Jam jar is by far more dangerous than a scoop of Sudocrem. If she gets hold of it she can easily smash the jar and seriously hurt herself.

BTW I love the Sudocrem pot - so easy to open and use. I think Bepanthen is better in most cases but I use Sudocrem far more often purely because of the lovely pot.

[baffled]

yup, what zingzilla said. Its nothing to do with marketing. Pharmaceutical firms HAVE to record adverse events - this information is absolutely necessary to ensure the oingoing safety of the product. If they didnt record it, and some other child ingested sudocreme at a later date and the reaction was a more severe version of what happened to your dd, what would you say if they hadnt taken note of your little ones incident? You would probably kicking up a stink because you ALREADY told them something happened and they didnt keep a record of it. It might have seemed a little 'unfeeling' but its in the best interests of the public that they ask these questions.

LOLOL at Oscar Wilde and the Pseudocreme.

Thank you Pixie

Like most I can't see how it has happened twice or what the big issue was. If anything in that situation I would be pleased they are taking the issue seriously.

I use sudocreme with Ds and can see no way he could eat it without me being able to stop him in time!

Like most I can't see how it has happened twice or what the big issue was. If anything in that situation I would be pleased they are taking the issue seriously.

I use sudocreme with Ds and can see no way he could eat it without me being able to stop him in time!

Off the main topic here but do you really need to use sudocrem or any nappy product every time you change a nappy?

If you don't put cream on then there won't be any for her to put in her mouth.

I have had 4 kids, 2 in reusable nappies and I have barely opened a jar of sudocrem and hardly ever put nappy cream on them. DC4 sometimes gets cream when she is really sore but that is hardly ever and I find a time with no nappy on helps.

OP, if you really want to blame someone, you were to blame as your risk assessment was clearly wrong. It was just an accident though, so instead of trying to blame the company, learn from this and put it further away.

I, like someone else said earlier, prefer Weleda or Bepanthen, but only use those when actual rash appears as I find Sudacrem so much easier to use. I even leave the cap off most of the time, shock horror. I would hate for them to change the design just because of a silly mistake any of us could have made.

Blame culture is stupid. Oh, and e-mail sounded nice to me anyway. My thoughts when hearing about cream consumption was
a) Poor child, must have tasted horrid
b) Bet it was difficult getting that cream out of carpet
c) Bet pot will be put further away next time
Never for a moment did I think the company should spend millions on designing a new lid (and then potentially annoying half of their customers in the process!)

My mum nearly drowned age 4 because my grandmother was reading a book looked away for 2 seconds. My mum taught me to swim when i was 8 months old and she did not ban the sea.

Debs75 - I was wondering about this but I know my standards aren't always as high as they might be so assumed I was in never having any Sudocreme other than the tiny pots you get in the bounty packs ao didn't dare mention it.

I'm sure the company would be very grateful to you for assisting in their questions. Maybe even a bunch of flowers!
Thing is pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to test their products on children as it is unethical, so if they can get any information on side effects of ingestion it is like gold dust to them and would help other children in the future as it can be noted by the national poisons information service.
Hence their eagerness to question you about DDs symptoms!

Debs75 after my DDs first bit of nappyrash I used sudocrem or vaseline or any other barrier cream religiously aftrer each nappy change. The result? Not just did DD or DS never get "really bad" ever again (DD hadn't got 'really bad' the first time), they didn't ever have even a hint of redness ever.

That's why I used sudocreme each change.

I thought the same about using it every time, I don't see the need to use anything like that when not needed. Generally a tiny amount at the first sign of redness is enough to mean no more is needed.

Sudocrem is designed to be opened with one hand while you are changing a baby.

That is why it's easy to open.

It's not harmful if ingested, really it's not. They are investigating it because if someone ate say 30 pots of it and died, then they'd be in the shit if they did not do due investigation of previous complaints.

Had your child eaten a tampon you would receive the same set of questions.

Or a tube of toothpaste.

You sound unreasonably upset by this.

Collecting information about side effects is a good thing and is used to make the product safer.

culturemulcher- you shouldn't used sudocrem or other barrier cream with every nappy change if you are using modern disposable nappies. They are unnecessary and interfere with the "stay dry" layer thus increasing rather than reducing the likelihood of nappy rash.

OP sounds bonkers. Sudocrem's email is more than reasonable.

That's what we were told 18 years ago Fayrazzled. We never used any nappy cream. If a red rash developed we would just put a spot of Vaseline on. Maybe we were just lucky but I always believed going nappyless for part of the day helped.