Plainfield Mom Warns Of Tub Toys After Baby Almost Loses Eye

PLAINFIELD, IL — When a seemingly harmless object posed a serious threat to her baby's life and sent him to the hospital, one Plainfield mother decided to break her silence and educate others about the potential dangers of tub toys.

Eden Strong was informed by her nanny one day in March that her 2-year-old son, Baylor, had squirted himself in the eye with a tub toy. She noticed his eye was slightly red and figured it "was just irritated from the water, or maybe the pressure of the water, and so I didn’t think much of it," she said.

"But when I put him in his high chair that night for dinner and noticed that his eye looked even redder than it had earlier, I had my husband run him over to urgent care, assuming he had pink eye," Strong wrote in her Facebook post, which has since been shared hundreds of thousands of times. "The doctor agreed and I patted myself on the back a bit for being so attentive. He got his first dose of eye drops and because I was already priding myself on being attentive, I decided to give him a booster dose in the middle of the night just to assure he would be feeling better by morning."

But, when she saw his eye was twice its size with redness spreading down his cheek, she realized it could be cellulitis — a potentially serious bacterial skin infection. Baylor was taken to the ER and the doctor prescribed oral antibiotics, which were given to him at 2:30 a.m.

"When he woke up at 6 a.m. and I laid eyes on him in his crib, I screamed to my husband to get in the car. His eye was so swollen that the white part was bulging out from between his eyelid and his iris was being obscured. He felt hot to the touch and a temperature check showed that he had a raging fever," Strong wrote in the post.

He was immediately put on IV antibiotics and scans were done to check his retina. The doctors said he had severe cellulitis that had spread to his face and both the eyes. They even said he might lose vision in the eye where the infection began, she said. However, he pulled through.

"He's doing great, we are so blessed that he made a full recovery," Strong told Patch. "I was beyond horrified. There was my sweet baby and I could barely look at him. Thankfully he was happy throughout the entire ordeal, smiling away when I'm not sure I would if the situation were flipped."

After months of not being able to look at photos of Baylor in that condition, Strong said she wanted to talk about it because she wished she had known about this earlier, and "other people should know too." She said she knew water could get trapped in tub toys, especially the rubber ones designed to squirt water.

"I've seen the posts where mom’s have cut them open and discovered a ridiculous amount of mold inside. I knew. So I squeezed them out after each bath, cleaned them out every few weeks with a bleach water solution, and regularly held them up to the light to look for mold," she said. "However, I didn’t know that even with regular bleach cleaning, the fact that they never fully dry on the inside means that bacteria can still grow. Invisible bacteria."

Strong is now an advocate for discarding tub toys that are designed to shoot water.

"I threw away all the squeezable rubber bath toys and would highly recommend other parents do the same," she said. "You cannot see bacteria, which is a scientific fact. A clean toy may not actually be a clean toy and when trapped water is involved, it's a recipe for disaster."

Some people reached out to her on social media and suggested putting glue over the hole in a tub toy to prevent water from entering, whereas others have said that they tried this method but found mold on the inside when the toys were cut open.

"I don't recommend gluing them," Strong said. "We now only use tub toys that are able to be completely dried in between baths, to lessen the risk of bacteria and mold growing on and in and on them."

She said she does not wish to disclose the name of the manufacturer, but she mailed them the toy and so far they have been "very" responsive.

"I'm hoping they rectify the problem," Strong said. "I would caution parents that this is not an isolated incident linked to one specific company. This is definitely an issue across all brands, which has been reinforced just by the sheer number of emails and messages I've received from parents who have had the same problem."

In spite of the harrowing experience, she said Baylor has retained his happy nature, and she is grateful to the doctors who were able to treat him in the middle of a pandemic.

"Baylor is the most chill little guy I have ever met. He rarely cries, is always smiling, and such a joy to have around," Strong said. "I was so worried this experience would change him, but he remained happy through it and is my same happy guy now."

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