Radiation

I can vividly recall some scorching sunburns of my youth.

The kind where you are so hot it hurts to wear clothes. You try to lie down but your skin heats up your sheets and pillow. Your head pounds, your skin tightens and you just emit heat like a blinking neon sign. Then, a few days later, you can peel great sheets of skin, like a molting snake, off your back and arms and nose. And years later, you are still paying the price of that sun damage...

My mother tried. We would put sunscreen on when we were on vacation to the beach . But a woefully inadequate amount, and probably just once, and it was probably only SPF 15, and was probably left over from two summers before.

I did get a very very bad sunburn that was entirely my own fault, as an adult, when I fell asleep on a beach in Australia. Marcus and I frantically searched through all our toiletires to see if any contained aloe. The only one that did was his travel-size can of shaving foam, so I smeared that all over my legs. I was 10 weeks pregnant at the time and the smell of the shaving cream made me throw up, but jumping up to go to the bathroom made me scream because of my sore legs. They swelled up the next day and I could hardly walk for a week.

So, I determined that as long as my children's skin was my responsibility, I would make sure they didn't get sunburnt. When I just had the one PFB (Precious First Born) I was vigilant. This child is particularly fair, to the point you can see the veins in her face. Suncream, hats, buggy shade everytime we walked into town, much less played in the garden, went to the park, or went to the beach -- all factor 50, which is so thick it doesn't rub in, so we called her the ghost baby.

Along came child 2. His first summer we obviously kept him out of the sun, and the second was pretty miserable with hardly any sun the whole summer. So the suncream wasn't an issue.

Then last summer, a sunny weekend comes along, we put some sunscreen on them both and the next day, child 2 comes out with a rash. Now, that day happened to be 1) a bank holiday -- no doctor's office open and 2) the day before I was to be induced with child 3, so i didn't really fancy lugging the boy to an out-of-hours clinic. (he didn't have any other sympotms, just a rash, so it's not like I was being that negligent).

The summer was again grey and rainy, but I didn't notice because I had a 3 year old, a 2 year old, and a newborn. We mainly watched TV and breastfed our respective baby/dolly/bin lorry.

Another sunny day came in September (you may think I'm exaggerating the greyness of a Dublin summer, but I'm not) so as an 'experiment' I put sunscreen on the boy again. otherwise known as I forgot that the last time he had it on he got a rash. So he got another rash.
Hypothesis: My 2 year old is allergic to sunscreen.
Method: 1. Put sunscreen on 2 year-old.
2. See if he gets a rash
Result: Allergic to sunscreen.

With all this in mind, I had meant to go to the chemist (pharmacy) and ask them what sunscreen I should get for him. But I didn't get around to it before this weekend, since it's been grey and rainy here. But then we went away to a Belfast this weekend and....

The sun shone! (I honestly never would have predicted that)
A lovely day with the lovely Ali and her lovely family included lots of playing in the lovely sunshine.

But that afternoon, on my child 1 (the PFB)...pink cheeks. Pink arms. And the mommy guilt. (The sunscreen-allergic boy, by the way, didn't get burnt at all). Would she have an awful, burning, tossing and turning night, with a headache and peeling and agony?

Well, no, becuase it was Belfast, after all, not Hilton Head or Australia. She was fine the next day.

But...

now...

Freckles!

(and they are so absolutely adorable, I'm tempted to let her run around without sunscreen more often so she gets even more!)