What happens when children eat hand soap

‘Did anyone in your office eat soap today?’
‘No, I was close, but I managed to contend myself’
‘Baby Girl didn’t’

Daddy T came home from work a few hours after Baby Girl had managed to apply hand soap in her mouth instead of on her hands and claimed she had swallowed ‘lots’. By the time Daddy T came home I was ready to joke about the incident, but when it happened I’d been slightly less relaxed and very concerned about 29-month-old Baby Girl’s definition of ‘lots’, which I had to assume was an exaggeration considering what I’d seen and how long I’d looked away for.

Baby Girl had been in our downstairs loo, the door was open and I was only a couple of metres away, while she was washing her hands independently, which has become very important for her in the last six months. It’s usually a very straightforward process too and my only concern previously has been her tendency of getting the floor pretty wet, but this time she came running back to me with her mouth wide open and a big bubble covering her entire little mouth. The smell was impossible to mistake for anything else. This was definitely hand wash.

I asked her if she’d put soap in her mouth and she nodded and started crying. It clearly didn’t taste very nice. I rushed her back to the sink to try cleaning it off with water and get as much out of her mouth as possible. I wiped her teeth with kitchen roll and then called our favourite GP Dr Smart at private London healthcare centre The Smart Clinics for advice while Baby Girl was still screaming in the background.

We both calmed down after the call, and I started pouring glasses of water for Baby Girl to drink. At bedtime, I forgot all about trying to limit her milk intake. I happily refilled her bottle when she asked for more, and was thrilled when she had no signs of tummy ache.

She most definitely had lots of fluids–and lots of comments about remembering only to eat food from now on. Soap has officially been added to the list of things we don’t eat.

No eating soap. This is our new house rule.

Tags: Dr David Smart, Fluids, Growing up, Hand wash, Private GP, Swallowing foreign objects, Toddler behaviour