April summer; Warning--Heat exhaustion/stroke danger in covering infants from sun during high temps

This April weather is outrageous--70s. Forecasters predict a high of 77 degrees today and 80 tomorrow. April in Vermont isn't supposed to have weather like this. It's usually rainy, and we've had very little rain so far. You know, April showers bring May flowers, not April summers bring May bummers.

This means we've hit summer in our mobile home. Today's temp indoors will reach mid to upper 80s thanks to the sauna properties of this building that just soaks up all the outdoor elements: freeze in winter, roast in summer (and apparently in spring 2008). I don't want to be here for Wednesday.

We've already had to pull out the fan, and might have to consider the air conditioner if temps stay up. NT's intolerance to heat necessitate some type of cooling system so he doesn't get heat exhaustion which is nasty stuff. He almost died from it when he was one year old.

We were at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire during a week-long camping trip. Temps that day reached 100 degrees and not one place on the strip had air conditioning. I was suffering from heat exhaustion myself with a splitting headache I never want to experience again. When I checked on him in the stroller where we had covered him with a towel to keep sunlight off him, his face when pale white and not a drop of sweat on him. He was lethargic and unresponsive.

NEVER COVER A CHILD IN A STROLLER WITH A CLOTH, BLANKET, TOWEL, OR SIMILAR THING IN THE HEAT!!! IT CREATES A SAUNA AND INCREASES THE TEMP WHERE YOUR CHILD IS!

Mortified, we rushed him to a bathroom and splashed him with cool water including wetting his shirt, which I years later learned wicks heat away from the body. Then we placed him in front of the fan the restaurant had stationed in the waiting area that was packed with people trying to escape direct sunlight. During lunch we gave him cool sips of water and he began to come around. We spent the remainder of the day driving around in the air conditioned truck and walking the cool supermarket.

That was a scare I never want to experience again. And so, we have air conditioning in our home to protect NT. Today when he overheats, his face turns a strange blotchy mixture of beet red and bone white--goes all white when over the top--but, thankfully, he now sweats some where he didn't used to. So when we see these symptoms, we cool him.

We'll never know if that incident caused his intolerance to heat or if it's due to a pituitary gland malfunction since he was unable to regulate his temp on his own when he was born. It is likely due to the latter, but the first heat stroke incident certainly didn't help.

How I long for normal April weather. All I can say is, I hope July and August weather don't resemble summer in Death Valley.

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Tech Tags: heat exhaustion ~ heat stroke ~ warning ~ parents ~ infants ~ heat ~ danger ~ April ~ weather ~ spring ~ high temperature ~ heat intolerance ~ pituitary gland ~ air conditioning

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