A devastated mum says she wants to warn other parents of the dangers that could be lurking in their child’s bath, after her son almost lost his eyesight from playing with bath toys.

Eden Strong explained that she knew water could get trapped in bath toys and cause mould to grow, so she was always diligent about making sure they were clean.

“I squeezed them out after each bath, cleaned them out every few weeks with a bleach water solution, and regularly held them up to the light to look for mould,” she explained in a viral Facebook post.

“However, I didn’t know that even with regular bleach cleaning, the fact that they never fully dry on the inside means that bacteria can still grow. Invisible bacteria.”

Eden said she’d noticed Baylon’s eye was a little red and was told by the family’s nanny that he’d squirted himself in the eye with a bath toy.

“I figured it was just irritated from the water, or maybe the pressure of the water, and so I didn’t think much of it. But when I put him in his high chair that night for dinner and noticed that his eye looked even redder than it had earlier, I had my husband run him over to urgent care, assuming he had pink eye.

“The doctor agreed and I patted myself on the back a bit for being so attentive. He got his first dose of eye drops and because I was already priding myself on being attentive, I decided to give him a booster dose in the middle of the night just to assure he would be feeling better by morning.”

But when Eden went to give Baylor another dose of eyedrops, she was shocked.

“I wasn’t expecting to find him in his crib with an eye twice the size as it was when he went to bed, with redness spreading down his cheek. A bit of an internet medical guru, I immediately wondered if he might be developing cellulitis, and so off to the ER we went. There, another doctor once again agreed with my diagnosis and wrote him a prescription for oral antibiotics, which we filled and gave him at 2:30am.

“When he woke up at 6am and I laid eyes on him in his crib, I screamed to my husband to get in the car. His eye was so swollen that the white part was bulging out from between his eyelid and his iris was being obscured. He felt hot to the touch and a temperature check showed that he had a raging fever. Despite having another child with epilepsy and therefore being pretty good at keeping my cool, I cried the entire drive to a larger hospital, praying that he wouldn’t lose his eye.”

The little toddler was given intravenous antibiotics and had a CT scan to check his retina.

“The next week was pretty scary. He had severe cellulitis that eventually spread down his face and to both eyes. They warned me that he may lose vision in the worse eye, but in the end, thank the Lord his eyes healed.”

While this happened in 2020, Eden still wants the story to continue being shared, so other parents know the dangers of bath toys.

“But tub toys? THROW THEM OUT. You cannot clean them, you just can’t. I don’t have any moldy tub toy pictures to show here, because there was never any visible moild to take a picture of. You can’t see bacteria and I’ve known that since 6th grade science class but I thought I was better than dirty tub toys. I was wrong. So those tub toys? Just throw them out.”

The post did prompt other parents to check their children’s bath toys, with many horrified at what they discovered, like this mum below.

Mouths of Mums members have also taken to the Forum to ask for recommendation on bath toys that don’t go mouldy. One of the best options is to go for foam bath toys, or ones that are specifically created to remain mould-free, because they have no holes.

Make sure you also check out our article on the mum who discovered her baby’s cot was making him sick.