A mum has recounted the terrifying ordeal after her baby daughter sustained severe burns despite being slathered in factor 50 sun cream – on a cloudy day in Scotland. Lauren Leishman, 22, ventured out with her 12-month-old daughter Rhegan to a farm show in Haddington, East Lothian, on Saturday, June 28.
Despite the cool weather prompting both Lauren and Rhegan’s father, Kai, to don jumpers, Lauren diligently applied sun cream on her little one “just to be safe”. After spending merely three hours outdoors, they discovered that baby Rhegan had turned “literally bright glowing red”.
The following morning brought Lauren’s worst fears to life as Rhegan’s face and hands were engulfed in massive, fluid-filled blisters. In a panic, Rhegan was taken to the Royal Hospital for Children and Young People in Edinburgh for treatment, where a nurse grimly informed them that her face would peel back to raw skin.
Lauren, who works as a carer in Dalkeith, Midlothian, expressed: “It’s such a wee shame. I just want to make other people aware. It’s Scotland, how can she burn that badly with sun cream? It’s crazy. She’s in agony.” She recalled that the family had set off to the local farm show that morning under completely overcast skies, with temperatures peaking at a mere 18C. “It was such an overcast day, we both had jumpers on,” she recounted, reports Wales Online.
“It was chilly and I actually remember thinking to myself ‘do I bother with sun cream or not?’ and I thought ‘I’ll just put it on just to be safe’.” Lauren applied what she believed to be a reliable Malibu Kids Factor 50 sun cream, touted as “high protection” and “clinically proven to be kind to skin”. She recounted the harrowing ordeal: “We were out from half ten until half one, came home and she was sleeping in the car seat and when she woke up and we had a look at her she was literally bright glowing red.
“The highest recorded temperature on Saturday was 18 degrees. And that would have been later in the afternoon, so we would have been home by then.” Despite initial treatments with aloe vera and aftersun, Rhegan’s condition deteriorated rapidly overnight. Lauren described the terrifying morning after: “She woke up in the morning and she was just so blistered. Huge big filled blisters. So as soon as we saw we took her right to hospital.
“I just felt panic straight away and just the guilt was awful.” The severity of Rhegan’s burns left doctors astonished, leading them to treat her with special ointment and advise a strict two-week indoor recovery period. Lauren shared the distressing details: “She’s in agony and every time I have to put the cream on her I literally have to pin her down to put it on.
“It’s so sore for her. It’s open skin I’m having to touch with the cream.” Despite the product’s labelling as a child-friendly factor 50 sunscreen, Lauren has vowed never to use it again after the traumatic incident. She expressed her dismay and guilt: “It’s so, so sad and you feel so guilty but you just look at a bottle and think factor 50 for kids, perfect, what can go wrong?”.
“You just think that if they’ve got sun cream on they can go and play in the sun but we weren’t even abroad we were literally on our doorstep in Scotland, you wouldn’t think that it could ever happen. We’ve never used that sun cream before, that was the first time. God I would never ever again use it.”
Lauren is now encouraging other parents to examine UVA star ratings on products before applying them to children. She explained: “I would say just absolutely research the sun cream you’re using on your child beforehand. I have seen a few comments on my Facebook post saying we used this sun cream in Spain or in a different country and the same thing happened to us. Check the ratings. Ratings on sun creams go by stars and I think five star is the best and that one was only a three star.
“So had I known that I would never have bought that cream. You just think it’s kids on the bottle, it says factor 50, that will be great. But it hasn’t got a high rating and had I known that I would never have bought it.” Rhegan remains in discomfort, and Lauren reveals her daughter’s face “only seems to be getting worse”.
Lauren explained: “She is still sore and her face actually only seems to be getting worse. The nurse said in the hospital that pretty much her whole face will just peel back to just raw skin. But she still is herself I suppose, but just a bit less so. I am worried about scarring. Obviously because it’s her face and with her being a wee girl, I just hope that it doesn’t leave her marked.” Lauren has expressed her anxiety about exposing her daughter to the sun once more, stating: “I’m worried about taking her outside in the sun again. We definitely won’t this summer.
“She will have to stay in for two weeks but the rest of the summer she won’t be out in the sun. It was just her birthday and she got loads of garden toys, a wee sand pit, but that will definitely not be used this year.” Following Lauren’s complaint, Malibu Sun has dispatched their complaints information pack to her and is awaiting a response to conduct a thorough investigation.
