It started with a cold – What you need to know about Slapped Cheek

What is Slapped Cheek syndrome?

Slapped Cheek syndrome (also known as Fifth Disease) is a common childhood illness, characterised by a bright red rash on one or both face cheeks.

Early symptoms may include:

• a high temperature
• a runny nose and sore throat
• a headache

A few days after the onset of Slapped Cheek syndrome and the bright red cheeks, a spotty rash may appear on the chest, arms and legs. The cheek and body rash usually fades within 2 weeks.

First symptoms of Slapped Cheek Syndrome

An early symptom of Slapped Cheek can be a cold. Our toddler had a really rotten cold the week before his birthday. By the time the actual day came around, he still had a major case of the sniffles, but was back to full energy. So we assumed he was getting better. We didn’t realise that the cold was actually the start of Slapped Cheek, or Fifth Disease, as it is also known.

He was unusually fussy in the afternoon on the day after his birthday. We put this down to tiredness after all the excitement. He had a little cat-nap in my arms. By the time he woke, he was miserable and burning up. He went from normal temperature to 38.5 in less than half an hour.

His cheeks were bright red. Like he was blushing. This hadn’t happened the last time he had a temperature. He spent the rest of that day sleepy and feverish.

Slapped Cheek rash

The next day, he still had a high temperature, but the bright red cheeks had disappeared. Sam left on a business trip. That night was horrific. He would not settle, refused to feed, and was waking every hour or so. At 4.30am, I gave up and took him downstairs to start our day really early. With the lights on downstairs, I noticed that his cheeks had come up in a rash.

As an eczema and allergy baby, we are very used to him having rashes, especially on his cheeks, but this didn’t look like his typical eczema rash. We had googled Slapped Cheek when his cheeks first went bright red, now I really suspected that this was what we were dealing with – the GP agreed.

We had been hanging out with my pregnant friend in the period when my toddler would have been most contagious, which is before the rash shows up. Unfortunately, Slapped Cheek can be a danger to pregnancy, so we needed to let her know straight away. She is getting a blood test to check her immunity. I also let all of the parents we’d been in contact with over his birthday celebrations know to look out for early symptoms in their children.

Throughout that day, the rash spread to his body, and by the evening his arms, legs, and trunk were covered. At some point, he also developed blisters on his hands and feet (and also in his mouth, I think). The blisters are more indicative of Hand, Foot and Mouth disease rather than Slapped Cheek, which is a bit confusing.

Slapped Cheek or Hand foot and Mouth?

Can you get slapped cheek and hand foot and mouth at the same time? In our case, symptoms started with a heavy cold, then the bright red cheeks indicative of Slapped Cheek. The only symptom that didn’t track with the typical slapped cheek symptoms, is the mouth blisters that my toddler had. Perhaps he had slapped cheek and hand foot and mouth at the same time, or perhaps it was slapped cheek with bonus mouth and hand sores for fun – I am not sure.

Update: Since initially writing this, my son has had hand foot and mouth several times, as have his younger siblings. The only similarity between this illness and hand foot and mouth was the blisters and fever – no red cheeks or rash when they had hand foot and mouth.

Slapped Cheek symptoms day 3

After a couple of days, the rash was all over his body. I cannot stress the all over bit enough.

He didn’t really feed much during the week he had the cold, his nose was so blocked that he found it hard to breath when feeding. And then he stopped feeding completely the week after, so he went a whole two weeks without a proper milk feed.

I felt so sorry for him as he desperately wanted to feed, but I think he had mouth sores. He’d try to latch on, straight away pull off and wince in pain. His refusal to feed made it very difficult to get him to sleep, as that is still our usual method for night wakings. He wasn’t too happy to be held, but he’d eventually drop off in a cradle hold, after a good half an hour of walking, whispered songs, and back pats. This was happening every hour and a half for three days, which meant I never got any more than one hour of sleep at a time. Sam was still away. It was exhausting.

It took about a week for my toddler to start feeling better. He still has the rash on his face, although it’s fading on his body. It doesn’t look half as bad now. Aside from the brief interval that was his birthday party, we had two whole weeks quarantined in the house. It would be an understatement to say that we are both eager to get out and start doing some activities again.

And I am sick of Cbeebies.