When a story involves infants and oozing, you know it's not gonna be good. A dad in MA posted photos on flickr about how his kid got a big, oozy burn on her stomach after sleeping overnight in an ipodmybaby bodysuit from American Apparel. It's not at all clear why, frankly, whether it's a silkscreen breathability problem, a latex ink allergy problem [the IPMB folks say there's no latex in the silkscreened image, though], or what, but pictures of the clickwheel-sized rash/burn and various strangers' conjectures are all on flickr for everyone to overreact to.
Meanwhile, ipodmybaby and American Apparel are both suddenly going through some kind of "not intended for sleepwear!" frenzy, even though the sleepwear standards for infants say nothing about silkscreening [and even though AA sells only plain bodysuits to basically every baby clothes designer in the country]. Something seems not right about this to me, but maybe that's just because our kid has never had an adverse reaction to a piece of clothing, silkscreened or not, even the AA onesies she sleeps in. Obviously, if your kid wakes up with Old Testament-scale boils on her chest, you'll find my perspective less than enlightening.
"product alert!" [driki on flickr via dt reader christy]
Youch! Those are some scary pictures. Do you suppose it is the size of the transfer -- relatively large in comaprison to the baby -- that made things even worse?
My oldest breaks out in weepy rashes from black dye, so we have to prewash everything, especially Halloween witch costumes (which seem to be made with the most irritating dyes known to man). That was quite a thing to discover when she was four....
Ouch is right, but it's not that uncommon for babies to have skin sensitivities. It looks like it was just the transfer and not the whole onesie that she was allergic to. "Not intended for sleepwear" generally means that the fabric was not made with fire retardant materials, and has no basis for arguing an intense skin reaction. That would have happened either day or night so that statement is just ridiculous. What would they have said had she put it on in the morning and the rash appeared by lunch? Not intended for daywear?
I think this is a huge overreaction on the parents part. Children are sensitive to lots of things before the age of 1. My son sleeps in his ipod shirt on the days he's wearing it and has never experienced a problem, and yet when we go for his baby shots the hand wash the nurses are required to use causes him to break out. It's young sensitive skin, not any malicious attempt to burn babies by ipodmybaby. Check out their website, they love ipods and babies.
That looks horrible, but I do hate how quick people are to scream product liability. Is it a product liability if its just your child, or is it your child's sensitive skin?
I'm the guy behind "that other" iPod onesie...
Not that I'm saying it absolutely won't happen with one of the shirts i designed, but it hasn't happened to our son, and he's slept in the shirt many times (for naps at least). Nor has it happened to anyone we've heard of.
I'm with Coup - this looks like lameass parenting masquerading as a product alert. This Flickr baby laid on its stomach in this ipod shirt on the scroll wheel part OVERNIGHT! I learned about this shirt on this site, bought it for my 12 month old and nothings happened. That was 3-4 months ago - why now is there one irritation and suddenly this shirt is dangerous. CRAZY! Could be an allergy, could be that the baby has super sensative skin, but my kid's been fine with it.
As a fellow clue-less new parent, I know how easy it is to blame someone else for just know knowing what to do. It was a simple mistake - you left your baby in a warm shirt and she sweat on it. Get over it. Learn from it.