Doctors think my 1 year old has type 2 herpes. I’m at a loss

[hakoa]

So my 1 year old had her 12 month check up today. I was at work, but her father took her in. Not an hour later I got a text telling me the doctor thinks she had type 2 herpes and I am losing my mind. I’m spiraling.

She has had a diaper rash for about a week, it started with just your typical redness and then it got very painful to where we had to use a perri bottle instead of wipes. A couple days after that I noticed a couple sores near her peri area, and then all of these little pimple like red bumps appeared on the lining of her buttcrack and around her anus.

I assumed this was just a REALLY bad diaper rash and since her appointment was so soon I figured we’d try to treat it and if it hadn’t gotten better we’d address it at the check up.

The pediatrician told my partner she thought it looked like type 2 herpes more than anything else and asked if our 1 year old daughter had been abused. She took a swab and sent it off to the lab and now we have three days of absolute hell until we get the results.

My partner and I work opposite shifts as to avoid babysitters. She has only been at her grandmas and other family’s members house while supervised. We do not know anyone with herpes. We do not have it. The fact that someone may have even touched my precious baby has had me spiraling since I got the notification. It has to of been a family member if she does have it.

She shows no other signs or symptoms of herpes, her mouth was checked out and it seemed fine. She screamed when the Doctor did the swabs but besides that it doesn’t seem very painful.

Idk. I’m just at a loss, I haven’t been able to stop crying and my mind will not stop reeling.

Her doctor said it could be a staph infection but she highly doubts it and suspects herpes. Of course the only thing I can do is wait for test result and try to hold it together but I just can’t.

Has anyone dealt with any similar situation? According to Google bad diaper rashes or yeast infections can cause the pimples, I just don’t know who would’ve hurt my baby.

 

[martinaidung]

@hakoa I see a lot of nappy rash in my job and the things that commonly contribute to it (such as fungal and bacterial infections) can definitely look similar to HSV. I personally wouldn’t mention HSV in such a blunt way (I prefer to say “I’m going to take a couple of different swabs to check for bacterial, viral, and fungal infections”) and I’m sorry that’s caused you so much distress. I’m sure your paediatrician was just trying to make sure your daughter was going home to a safe space but it could maybe have been worded a bit more tactfully.

Until the swabs come back I know that nothing will ease the anxiety, but hopefully knowing that other causes are much more common and can look very similar might help a little bit. Sending you lots of supportive thoughts!

 

[his_word_is_truth]

@martinaidung Came here to say this. Had to refer a child to child protection once because they had a rash that looked exactly like HSV. Social worker just made sure child had a swab taken, and it came back as thrush. They were a high risk family and had to be taken very seriously and ruled out.

Your doctor should not have mentioned specifics until taking the swab, from a basic safeguarding perspective. The parents are more like to disappear if there is something untoward and they know they’ve been caught.

I highly suspect it’ll come back as thrush, or perhaps even strep.

 

[terranova]

@his_word_is_truth Just curious, but what does “high risk” mean in this sort of situation?
Obviously not specific details for this family, but just how would a doctor determine some family is high risk?

 

[raheelbs]

@terranova I worked in a pediatric ER for about 4 years. We labeled families high risk if they: have a history of multiple ER visits for things like falls/broken bones/bruises which becomes suspicious after the 6th visit, homelessness (lots of sexual abuse in shelters unfortunately), past history of documented violence, any previous things in the chart that may raise a flag; parents refusing medical treatment/intervention, kid has history of abuse in their medical record, etc. High risk at my hospital just meant there was a higher risk of harm coming to that child than the average one so that we could keep an eye out for visits where they have bruises, etc. We even had a “crunchy mom” who refused antibiotics for her kids severe ear infection and tympanic membrane rupture who got labeled high risk and had to assign a social worker to their case. I really hope that kid got taken away by CPS because her ear was bleeding and she was screaming in pain and her mom just wanted to take her home and stick garlic and onions in her ear

 

[terranova]

@raheelbs That ear story sounds horrible! Poor kid.

 

[raheelbs]

@terranova Luckily the social worker got involved and before my shift ended there was already a social worker in the room and the kid was getting treatment. So many crazy similar stories though, we had another kid who broke their arm almost in half and the jehovas witness parents refused surgery so CPS got involved and I heard the kid almost lost their arm. Another one that haunts me forever is a jehovas witness 18 year old who had Marfans Syndrome and was having an aortic aneurysm, the parents told him he’d go to hell if he accepted treatment and because he was an adult he was allowed to refuse and we watched him die

 

[his_word_is_truth]

@terranova In my context, I’m an Early Years teacher and I’m in UK so practices may differ where you are.

So ‘high risk’ are families where the child is on the Child Protection register and we are generally given very basic information about the ‘why’ if there placement on it by social work. In the case of SA, there is generally a history of suspected or proven that we have been made aware of, or the child has disclosed. I work with children 0-7, so the younger children who are pre-verbal require us to report anything that could potentially be a sign. The social work team then take over and we have no involvement in the actual investigation outside of asking us for reports.

I’d rather be wrong a thousand times and report than right once and do nothing.

 

[rainriver]

@terranova Social worker (child therapist) here who also used to intern at CPS taking calls: Honestly mostly socioeconomic and racist biases. If I had $1 for every time someone reported someone’s kids to CPS because they were a person of color or in a low income, single mother family, I would be comfortably retired by 30.

People would call because the mom of a newborn said she has bipolar disorder (ok… but do you just know that and now you’re judging her, or is she actually symptomatic and refusing treatment?) or because four children are living with their mom in a 2br apt (ok… but is it clean? Do they have their own beds? Is there enough food?).

Honestly paediatricians offices were the worst culprits for bullshit calls like this. Aside from being insensitive to vulnerable populations who are doing their best and trying to criminalise poverty, it’s also a tremendous waste of CPS resources which are already very stretched and limited

 

[zurbupar]

@rainriver also a social worker, also work in child welfare. job title contains "high-risk therapist". you're not wrong and you make a good point.

"high-risk" is a term used in child welfare to indicate that there's other stuff going on with the family besides potential child neglect/abuse/maltreatment. a family where one caregiver has a history of substance abuse, a family where there is either active intimate partner violence or a history of it, a family where there have been removals in the past... so, if the family doesn't have housing, they're high-risk, and most families i've worked with that deal with housing insecurity or homelessness would agree they're high risk for that reason. the reason they're experiencing homelessness is where this car crash of oppressive, broken systems happens. so even if, as a hypothetical child welfare agency that does not exist, you're being diligent about cultural competency and doing everything right, you're still helping families pick up messes made for them by people who would rather just incarcerate anyone that makes less than 50k a year.

the bright side is that in each of these broken bureaucracies, there are always going to be a handful of parents for whom this is just what they needed and a handful of workers for whom this job really matters. but we have a long way to go and a lot of work to do.

 

[rainriver]

@zurbupar Gosh it’s such a good point you make. It would be so lovely if child welfare was adequately funded and centred around helping people meet their needs and alleviate systemic causes of being high-risk of adverse childhood experiences, instead of assigning a label that feels accusatory, in a context that’s largely framed as punitive. The combative and involuntary nature of child welfare, the fact that people can call and “report you” to an agency with a ominous, law enforcement-like reputation, is such a barrier to people who desperately need help and don’t know if they can trust their caseworker or the child welfare system as a whole due to its reputation. I’ll get off my soapbox. It’s just such a gross world we live in honestly

 

[zurbupar]

@rainriver agree, the punitiveness is what gets to me. that and, working in the field, i have to call cps on people just because their phone doesn't work for a month and they can't contact me. meanwhile actual sexual abuse in a family with a long cps history gets investigated by people who do not give a shit and don't know the family and it's determined "unsubstantiated."

 

[his_word_is_truth]

@rainriver I’m in the UK, and work in education. We are operating under very different definitions.

 

[rainriver]

@his_word_is_truth Meghan Markle has entered the chat

 

[mchenry1]

@his_word_is_truth Agreed. This doc was irresponsible and not just for jumping to conclusions. If or she truly believed it was that type of herpes, they should’ve been discreet about it because in the case of a positive result, that doctor should call child protective services. If I were a doctor who truly discovered genital herpes on an infant, I wouldn’t care if mom and dad denied it, I’d worry it was a caretaker and report it. So I would not use that word in front of any parents because if they ARE indeed abusers, I just gave them the heads up to disappear. This makes this doc lose credibility for me, if that helps OP at all.

 

[davidclarkson17]

@martinaidung This. My daughter had a red rash with bumps around her diaper area. I thought it was diaper rash. Went to the Dr and she told me it was a yeast infection which baby girls are prone to when they start sleeping longer. Gave me a prescription I used 4 times a day for 7 days and it cleared up.

I wouldn’t have been so rash or quick to jump to herpes as a Dr. My pediatrician took one look and immediately said yeast infection. Did the doctor give you anything to put on it in the meantime since it’s so raw and hurts her? If not I’d go to another doctor asap to get something. My pediatrician gave us Nystatin, Cream, 100,000 UNITS/GM.

I hope your LO feels better soon. And mom deep breath. It’ll be ok.

Edited to add: her rash started with bumps in the vagina area. My pediatrician said if I see bumps starting again call her for more medicine. She also recommended putting diaper cream on for long sleeps. It has helped amazingly and she hasn’t had a yeast infection again.

 

[cmwitham]

@davidclarkson17 Exact same for me. My daughter got a bad rash with pimples, a white sore, and a lots of redness. The doctor diagnosed it as fungal with a single glance. Gave us a scrip for cream and it cleared right up.

 

[gypsyjess84]

@davidclarkson17 I’m 33 with 2yo and didn’t find out yeast infections caused herpes like rashes until I was pregnant. I’ve had at least 3 OB check me for herpes when this has happened. None of them told me it was caused by a yeast infection. I had gone like 15ish years thinking there was a chance I had unidentified herpes. . . Also it was a Fing receptionist who told me about the yeast rash!!

 

[truemech]

@davidclarkson17 Big plus 1 to this- my daughter (12 months) just had a horrible thrush rash that looked like tiny pimples all over and it was so painful for her. Nyastatin cream cleared the whole thing up in a week

 

[kingdomkings]

@martinaidung Thank you for sharing, I had no idea.

I hope OP’s toddler is feeling better soon.