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Monday, December 5, 2011

Natural Solution for Clogged Tearducts in Infants

 When Thing 1 and Thing 2 were infants they had clogged tear ducts. They almost constantly produced these really thick tears that would dry and leave their eyes crusted together. I squeezed their tear ducts with a q-tip, just like my pediatrician showed me, but it didn't seem to help much. It finally resolved itself when they were each around 6 months old.
 When I took Cindy Lou Who in for her first checkup, she was starting to develop the same problem. Now keep in mind, my pediatrician is very conservative in his practice. (A different pediatrician since we moved a couple years ago.) I know this from my experience with my kids and from working with him at the hospital. He's not one to throw around alternative therapies and often gets frustrated when his patients put so much faith in them. So when he told me the following I figured it was worth a shot. "Ok, I know this sounds crazy and when I worked in Detroit I never imagined that I would ever suggest this to a patient, but it works. If you squirt a little breast milk in their eye it takes care of the clogged tear duct. If that's too weird for you, here's a prescription for antibiotic drops."
 And I'll admit it sounded a little weird. I know that breast milk has antibiotic properties, but would you really squirt dinner in your eye and expect it to clear up and infection? Generally not. However, when the thick tears and eye crustiness started getting worse I gave it a try. After a feeding I just squirt a bit of breast milk in each eye. It was pretty freaky looking to see her eyes coated with milk. But it didn't seem to bother her at all and she had no more issues with goopy eye secretions or crustiness after that point. I'm not going to guarantee that it will work for everyone, but it's a pretty harmless intervention and worked really well for my baby.

2 comments:

  1. hi! As soon as I read about clogged tear ducts, the first thing I thought of was breast milk. Works perfectly every single time my kids get an eye infection. My middle child used to get them often. I also use it on my baby's bum rashes. She had a rash so bad it bled (sorry for TMI but maybe could help someone with similar baby issues) she was allergic to the diapers I guess. I put my milk on it and healed it almost over night. crazy. I also heard its good to put in for ear infections but have yet to try it. Thanks for this post. I think few moms know this trick!

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  2. Mandi- Good tip about the bum rash. And as I've said before I suck boogers out of children's noses for a living, there's not much that can gross me out. I would be careful about putting breast milk in an ear because you don't want to much fluid in an ear, especially when it is already infected. But I do know that this works: http://secretsofmom.blogspot.com/2010/01/why-you-should-keep-alcohol-in-your.html

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