First Scary Thing with Jackman

Warning, this story gets a little gross...so read at your own discretion.

If this had to happen then I'm glad that it did when my mom was here so she could watch James while we took Jack to the doctor.
Exactly when he was a week old, Jack's eye started to get goopy, like he had an infection. We are lucky that our pediatrician's office has a 24 hour office in Layton, so we got in that evening (why is it that things always happen to kids after doctors offices are closed?). The doctor we saw said it was either an infection or a blocked tear duct and prescribed erythromycin gel for his eye. It would be better the next day if it was an infection.

Well...it was worse, way worse, so bad that I had tried to open his eye after using a warm wet wash cloth because it was sealed shut with goop and so much goop came out when I was opening it that I thought I had popped his eyeball.
I then called Nathan crying.
It also swelled up so he couldn't open it.
I thought he could be having an allergic reaction to the erythromycin (which it turns out my mom is allergic to also).
This picture does justice to the redness, but not the swelling.

So after one day of that medicine I was ready to take him back in. I called the doctors on Friday and they said (after having to wait to actually get a doctor to call me back mind you instead of an MA calling me back) if we felt comfortable to keep giving him the erythromycin because it is a new medicine and his body isn't used to it and it still could work, or to stop giving it to him and see what happens...

Um...are you kidding me? Yes I'm stopping, I think he's having an allergic reaction to the stuff!!

We stopped, and the swelling went down, it wasn't gooping so much that I thought his eyeball was popping, but it was still gunky so that it would seal shut when he would sleep and we'd have to use a warm compress to be able to open it again.

We also had some tobramycin drops that we had left from when James had pink eye a few months ago. However, we didn't know if we should try them. After lots of internet research we concluded that one drop wouldn't hurt, and gave it a shot on Friday evening.
That did help, but it was still a little gunky.
I concluded that we were going to need a prescription of the drops if we were ever going to get anywhere to helping his eye heal.

Thus back to the doctors on Monday morning to see our real pediatrician to see what was up and how to fix his poor eye (which by now we had to postpone newborn pictures because he looked horrible and we didn't know if it was pink eye and didn't want to infect others).

Long story short (too late!) our doc did prescribe tobramycin.
And he showed me some massages to help the little tear duct become unclogged.
And...both have worked!

A day after starting tobramycin drops

Mommy and Jackman (a newborn shot preview)
two days after starting the tobramycin and massages

James shared his monkeys with baby Jack, and his eye is all better!

What we learned:

1)It was a clogged tear duct, and could come back during this first year, but now we have a prescription with a few refills to help us out, and we know how to massage by his eye to help it.

2)Jackman is allergic to erythromycin

3)Listen to {mother's intuition/a little knowledge from nursing/common sense} when you think that your kid is having an allergic reaction!