Not sure what to do...

[SM23Mama21]

I babysat an 8 month old last Sunday that belongs to a coworker of my husband. Every time I've seen this baby, he has been sick and has had boogers on his face and food stuck in his hair. I never really thought much about it until I took care of him this last weekend. As soon as his mom dropped him off, I washed his face and hands. While doing this, I noticed that his outer ears were covered in earwax (worse than I've seen in anyone's ears), so I cleaned those too. Later while I was changing his diaper I noticed that he had poop left over on his bum from the last dirty diaper, and a strange looking sore (like a blister) on his privates. I also cleaned out his BLACK belly button. Yuck! My husband and I have been discussing what we can do to help this baby/mother, but I'm not sure how to approach it. The mother has no family around and her husband is overseas, so I'm sure she is overwhelmed doing everything on her own. I've thought about trying to spend more time with her to show her by example, but I am hesitant, because I don't want her sick baby getting my DS sick. I don't want to say anything to her because I don't want to offend her, but at the same time, I think someone needs to for the sake of the baby.

Any advice would be much appreciated!!

[mamaoftwins]

I would absolutely at least mention the sore - the cleanliness, I think, is hard to bring up, and people have different levels of that. Squish just had a staph infection which looked like a big sore on his bum and needed antibiotics to clear it up (if you leave something like that it could turn into an abscess and need surgery), perhaps this could segway into a mention of keeping the diaper area very clean (not that that definitely has to do with the sore). But, I would at least tell her that she should see her pedi about the baby's sore.

I dunno about the rest - sorry, not much help for you. I'm going to be mulling this one over now for sure.

[TonFirst]

"The mother has no family around and her husband is overseas, so I'm sure she is overwhelmed doing everything on her own."

From the little information I have, it sounds like there might be going on beyond just not knowing how to care for an infant. A good friend of mine has no family nearby, her husband is overseas for a year, and she has four children under the age of five - but her kids are always clean and free of caked poop, to say the least! And it sounds like even though she doesn't have family nearby, she has at least the framework of a support system in place through you and your husband.

Who is her child's caregiver when she's at work? Are there cultural differences that she may be dealing with in addition to the single parenting? People have different standards of cleanliness, for certain, but that is different than an unclean diaper area, KWIM?