I’ve always known I have sensitive skin.  It’s probably not as bad as it is for others, but there have been times when Whoa Nelly.  Like this one time when someone gave me some age defying skin serum stuff and it turned my entire face bright red and hot.  I had to wash it off immediately because of the burning. 

Or like that time I got poison ivy and after about a week, I broke out in hives because of it.  Yeah.

Yesterday, my face looked worse than it had all week, and it was hot to the touch.  I felt tingly and like I may have chills, so I called the doctor.  He suggested I go to the dermatologist.  Good thing I did because I was concocting all kinds of scenarios in my head.  Mainly staph infection. 

Turns out, I have hives, which is just my body’s reaction to the allergic reaction of the poison ivy.  What does that mean?  Who knows besides that my body has gone haywire, and red bumps and welts have shown up in various places and are equally as itchy as the poison ivy itch.  Awesome.

Here is a photo of my face and neck.  I tried to get a good angle so you could see all the redness, but it’s hard to take a picture of yourself. 

All of the red splotches on my face and neck are hives.  Lovely.

In an effort to pay it forward (no not the hives), I thought I’d share a little bit about what I learned from my derm visit yesterday.  Here goes:

Hives are your body’s natural reaction to stresses which can come in the form of actual stress, other breakouts, etc. 

Feeling chills or tingles is pretty normal when you have a rash.  Just another way your body is dealing with the breakout.

Unless you have an actual fever, as measured by a thermometer, chances are, you don’t have a staph infection.  (Good to know for panickers like me)

Benadryl cream, specifically, has been shown to cause hive-like reactions.  Special thanks to my doctor and pharmacist for not sharing that little tidbit with me before I started using it.

Taking prednisone while pregnant is perfectly safe.  In fact, if a baby is born early (between 35-40 weeks), doctors will sometimes give the baby prednisone to help with lung development and function.  So, if you take an oral dose or use a cream, which I’m now doing, it is fine.  And, the baby’s absorption rate is low anyway, so no need to worry on that.  Whew!

So, what am I doing now?  Taking Claritin during the day, Benadryl at night (because it makes me drowsy), and using a low-dose steroid cream twice a day on the most itchy spots.  Talk about zero to 60 on the drug use in one day.  But, it’s time to take care of this and myself, so hopefully it won’t last long.

Today, it looks a lot better although the itching is still torturous to the point of wanting to use some kind of device to scratch my skin.  Think machete.

It’s been two weeks since I showed you all our chickens.  Back then, they looked like this:

And now, at about 3 1/2 weeks old, they look like this:

They are probably double the size they were back then, and as you can see, their feathers are coming in nicely.  I love the red ones.  Presh!

They are still living indoors, well on our screened in back porch, because they are too small to be in the outside coop full time.  We did let them hang out in there last weekend.  They loved being able to roam around and scratch at the ground.  And, I’m sure they ate their share of bugs.  However, one did get out, and although, she went back in quickly, we don’t want to risk a nighttime escape. 

It has been raining since Sunday, so we have kept them in for warmth and shelter as well.  Hopefully, we can put them out for longer periods starting this weekend.  And we do plan on adding some additional chicken wire to the coop for protection. 

One question that keeps coming up is don’t you need a rooster to get eggs?  I thought I’d take time to address that here and offer a little bit of insight into the land of chickens and eggs.

Hens lay eggs regardless of if a rooster is present or not.  They follow somewhat of a cycle with light, and they will lay about an egg a day give or take some.  These eggs are the ones people eat.  They are the ones in the grocery store or in your back yard, etc.  Roosters do nothing to cause these eggs to come about.

The rooster, like most male species, assist in procreation.  Meaning they actually fertilize eggs, and a fertilized egg will hatch into a chicken.  These eggs are not ones you eat with the yolk and the white and all that.  They are chicks. 

So, there ya have it.  No, we do not need a rooster, nor do we want one.  They start their morning calling around 4am and don’t stop all day.  Annoying much?  Plus, we live in a neighborhood, so even if we liked that cockadoodledo, we would never subject our neighbors to it.

The only thing we are interested in is having chickens for fun and eggs, which we’ll start getting around August or September.  Very exciting!

Since my poison ivy outbreak, which I’m calling Devastation 2012, last week, I’ve been asked about a million questions about poison ivy.  I’ve also heard approximately 100 people tell me not to scratch it or it’ll spread causing me to utter in my best Southern drawl, if I have to hear that one more time.  Internal voice of course.

I’m no expert on the devil weeds known as poison ivy, oak and sumac, but I have had extreme contact dermititis (rash) from ivy and oak three times now so I feel a bit obligated to share what I’ve learned.  Mainly because it seems that people don’t know a lot about these rashes, so I’m hoping I can answer some questions and be helpful.  

First, just so we’re clear, here’s what I mean by extreme contact dermititis.  Look away if you are the squeamish sort.

That is a close up of my ring and little fingers from Sunday.  You can see how swollen they are, which is maybe a little bit due to pregnancy but mainly due to the poison ivy bumps.  Husband says my hand looks like a reptile.  Thanks honey.

Sadly, my fingers look 20 times better in this photo than they did Friday.  The swelling has gone down a lot, and I can bend my little finger without feeling like it’s going to break off.  I assume that kind of tightness is what arthritis sufferers feel, and I am sorry for them if that’s the case. 

Today, it’s even better thanks to my home remedy, which I swear by.  Seriously, in years past when I had this kind of rash, it took a month to go away and weeks to stop oozing.  The baking soda has worked wonders, and some patches look just like scratches now with no bumps to be seen.   

So, anyway, now that you know I’m serious, we can get down to business.  First, does poison ivy spread when you scratch?  Does it spread when it oozes?  Is the poison ivy rash contagious?

Depends, no, and no.  Explanation:

One can get contact dermititis from coming into contact with the oil from these poisonous plants.  The oil is called urushiol.  If you touch urushiol, either directly or indirectly (i.e. through clothes, tools or other objects), and you are allergic to it, you can develop a rash. 

The rash can show up the same day or up to 15 days later depending on how allergic you are to the oil and how much oil you came in contact with.  Mine tends to show up in 24 hours. 

People think scratching spreads it, and it can if the urushiol has not been washed off of your body.  So, if you are outside and come into contact with urushiol, then scratch your face or neck or stomach or anywhere on your body, you can spread the oil.  Then, the rash will show up in those places. 

But, once you have washed the urushiol off of your hands/body/clothes, you cannot spread it.  It is not in the bumps or scabs, so scratching or oozing does not spread it.

Bumps do show up at different times though causing people to think they have spread it by scratching.  As I said before, the rash can show up today or in 15 days, so it is highly likely that one day you’ll have the rash on your arm, then a day later, it’ll show up on your face, then maybe in a couple more days, you’ll see one or two bumps on your leg.  These are not from spreading the rash by scratching or oozing.  They are from the spreading that happened the first day you came into contact with it and touched your face, then your leg after you had touched your arm. 

I’ve also been asked what I’ve been taking?  Did I get a steriod shot?  Did I get a steriod cream?  Have I used calamine lotion?

Well, I’ve tried all of these in the past, but this time, I’ve kept to the baking soda paste and Benadryl cream.  I had a steriod shot a few years ago, the first time I had poison oak, and I felt like it was worthless.  I oozed for two weeks and had bumps for a month.  Then I had scars for a couple months before it all finally went away.  So, for me, that didn’t work.

I have used the steriod cream, which stops the itching temporarily, but since I’m pregnant, I did not want to use that this time.  The doctor said it was fine, but I chose not to fill my prescription.

Calamine lotion also did nothing for me except give me pink streaks on my skin and cause me to have to reapply every couple of hours because the itching is so bad. 

For people with a milder allergy, any or all of these remedies may work.  But for me, they did not.  After researching home/natural remedies and trying the baking soda paste, I am hooked.  I will never use anything else because the relief is instant, it’s cool and soothing, and the itching subsides for hours.  I have had to supplement with Benadryl cream, but not a lot. 

So, there ya have it.  Poison ivy/oak/sumac 101 as told by me, a non-expert who has had it three times.  For more information from more accredited sources, you can go here, here or here.

It’s official!  The compost bin is done and ready for use.  You may remember the last step we completed.  Well now, it’s complete complete.  Only thing is, it rained all day yesterday, so we didn’t get to put it outside for actual use.  Bummer.  And it’s raining today as well, soooo looks like tomorrow will be our first official day of composting in the bin.

We have already begun collecting rinds, peels, etc. in a bag to add to it, so we are ready Freddie, just like Queen.  I wanted to share a couple pics with you all so you can see how good it looks with the chicken wire on it.  I feel really proud of Husband for his design.  The only money we ended up spending on the bin was for this wire, and that was approximately $9.  The rest was made with items we already had.  Yes!

Here is what it looks like from the outside.  Don’t mind the closeness of the shot.  I was worried you wouldn’t be able to see the wire from afar.

Here is one of the inside.  Looks ready for some organic matter to me!

And here is a close up of one of the corners.  The wire is as tight as it could get to the corners which maximizes the space.  Again, way to go Hubby!

I can’t wait to start using this thing.  It’s going to do a lot for our dirt.  Yes, I just wrote that.  And you can file it under things I never thought I’d say.  Hoo boy.

Tuesday, I woke up to find several itchy, red bumps along my jaw line.  I immediately panicked because years ago, when Husband and I lived in the mountains, I came into contact with poison oak and broke out like nothing you have ever seen.  I had puss-filled bumps that oozed and itched to the point of it being unbearable.  Think minutes of scratching with a metal nailfile.  I do not recommend that by the way, just something that was necessary at the time.

It was awful.  So, Tuesday, after feeling that similar itch, I knew what I was in for.   

I was pulling a few weeds from our garden over the weekend and came across one that I didn’t recognize.  Could it be a plant from last year?  Who knew.  It had three leaves, but not coming from one stem, and two were normal looking while one was shiny…like poisonous plants are.  Hmm…but even though I paused for a quick second, I pulled it anyway thinking that it couldn’t be poisonous since not all of the leaves were shiny and it didn’t follow the old adage leaves of three…

Boy do I wish I had not touched that thing.  I am pretty allergic to these plants as evidenced by the oozing I’ve experienced, so currently, my neck is covered in a breakout.  From the back of my neck, along my jaw line, behind my ear, and even on my face.  You see, whatever skin you touch when you come in contact with the plant oil will break out.  Some breakouts occur in a day, while most are 24-48 hours later.  And some people, like me, will continue to have breakouts for several days after coming in contact with it as the oil begins to work it’s evilness. 

Because it doesn’t all show up at once, people think scratching spreads it.  But, it doesn’t.  It’s just that depending on how much oil you touched and how much rubbed off on other parts of your body, certain places you touch don’t get as much oil.  Less oil from the plant means less breakouts and possibly a delay in seeing the breakouts.  Still.  No matter when or how much of a breakout you have, it’s awful.    

Case in point, my little finger on my right hand.  One might think it is leprosy at first glance, but I assure you, it’s just an uncomfortable breakout of puss bumps.  Lovely.

After some research yesterday, I determined that the plant was actually poison ivy.  Luckily, I had a doctor’s appointment yesterday so I could ask my OB about medicines that were okay to take at roughly 8 1/2 months preg.  He prescribed a steroid cream, which I was completely uncomfortable with since, you know, THERE’S A BABY IN MY BELLY.

I asked him if there were any other options.  He mentioned Benadryl cream, so I went in search of some of that.  It does work temporarily as it says on the tube, but I still feel weird about using it while being pregnant.  I’m sure it’s safe, but you know how mom’s worry. 

That worry lead me to more research (I’m basically keeping Google afloat these days), and I’m lucky it did because I have found the miracle cure for poison ivy itch.  Cue the heavenly lights and angels singing!

After reading through some home remedies that included vinegar, the inside of a banana peel and oatmeal, I found one that sparked my interest.  Baking soda paste. 

First of all, did you know that baking soda is really called sodium bicarbonate or bicarbonate of soda?  I did not.  But, we’ll go with it’s common name, baking soda.  No need to get all uppity.

So, the website I found said to mix baking soda with water to form a paste.  There are various methods of removing it when it dries, but here is what I did:

Mix about a tablespoon of water with almost the same amount of baking soda.  Add more water or soda to get the pastey texture.  Enough to be wet, but not too much that it will run off of your skin.  It needs to stay on when you apply it.

Here is what mine looked like in the bowl:

Once you have the right consistency, apply it to all areas of your breakout.  Here is what it looked like on my arm.  Don’t worry, I am refraining from sharing the gross pictures.

Then, you just wait for it to dry.  It took about 5-10 minutes for mine to dry fully.  You’ll know it’s done when it starts to flake off. 

At that point, I wet a wash cloth with lukewarm water and rubbed it off.  Best.  Relief.  Ever.

When you are wiping off the paste, it’s like you are not only exfoliating your skin but allowing yourself to scratch the itchiest itch you have ever had with all your scratching power.  Even though I was very gentle, the grit of the baking soda did all of that, and it was glorious.  GLORIOUS!

Once I got all of the paste off, the relief was immediate.  No more itching.  No pain.  No discomfort.  Nothing.  I could tell the breakout areas were a little drier than they had been, but I’m not going to go so far as to say the baking soda drew out the toxins.  I have read that, but I’m not sure.

What I think is that the saltwater quality of the paste does miraculous things just like ocean water does to your skin.  And honestly, I do not care one iota about the science behind what that paste did to my skin because all that matters to me is the relief I felt. 

I went through the whole process again this morning, and from 6:15-ish until about 10:30, there was no itching.  Unbelieveable.  I’ll be repeating until this horrid devilish affliction is gone, which will hopefully be sooner than later now that I’ve discovered the miracle cure.

Well friends, it’s that time…probably a little late actually…to plant a garden.  But in our house, the motto is better late than never.  However, for this year’s garden, it looks like our motto doesn’t apply.  Why you ask?  Because we aren’t actually planting a garden.  Huh?

I know, I’ve spent many a day posting about gardening and getting our area ready.  But, as we’ve been doing other yard work and PREPARING TO HAVE A BABY, we decided that maybe we’ll do a small garden.  Then, one of the greatest things ever happened.  Some plants started growing in the garden area after we tilled.

We recognized one as a squash or zucchini plant and a couple as tomato plants, and we realized they must be growing from seeds from last year’s plants.  Wha?  How?  Who knows.  All we know is that we decided to go with it.  We were going to downsize our plan anyway, and instead of spending a lot of money on plants and seeds that probably won’t produce much in our sunless back yard, we are going to see what happens with these little gifts from the Universe.  Big step for me, planner extraordinaire, but one I welcome.

I did buy one packet of seeds for green beans and one squash plant just to see.  I will plant those tonight hopefully.  I also planted some basil and rosemary in pots that will adorn our front porch and hopefully turn into some delicious additions for our summer meals.  We have lots of shade, so fingers crossed.