Toddler Girl Vaginitis - When It’s Irritated “Down There”

Sure.

So this happens around the time where, um, it's obviously toddler females, when they are kind of just potty-trained, you know, preschool age.

You've had a long day at work.

Your toddler's been at preschool or daycare, and you've had dinner and you're trying to settle down for the evening, and you're doing your nightly routine.

You notice when they get dr- undressed they have some redness in their vaginal area.

It's irritated.

They don't wanna sit in the bath.

They're trying to void before going to bed, and sometimes it burns and hurts, and it can lead the child to be in, uh, to be quite upset, to be distressed, to be crying, to be sometimes screaming because of the pain.

And you as a parent are just at your wit's end.

There's a lot of things that are going through your mind at this time.

Could it be a urinary tract infection? Are they having trouble peeing? They have redness in their vaginal area, and they've been out of your care all day.

Could something have happened? This is a setup when you're trying to settle your child down for sleep where suddenly you're wondering, "Should I go to the emergency room for this? Is this an emergency, and should we pack up our things and, and head in the car right now?" So this is kind of like how this symptom can present in your child.

So what we're describing in these toddler girls that develop this redness at the vagina, this pain when peeing or this itchiness, this irritation, this stinging in that vaginal area, who have otherwise not had any symptoms of UTI or anything else, is vaginitis.

Vaginitis is the fancy word for that redness and irritation at the vagina.

This is something a lot of parents, particularly moms, aren't familiar with, and that's because when you start going into puberty as a female, the body produces estrogen that completely changes that skin, that mucosal lining of the vagina.

And once estrogen is in there, you're not prone to this anymore, but prior to that, that skin is very thin.

It's very easily irritated.

As soon as you go through puberty, all of that changes.

So this vaginitis, this irritation, this pain, this stinging that toddler girls will often report doesn't happen to older women, so of course when it happens to your daughter, you're worried.

Mm-hmm.

Usually if that happens to a woman, uh, that's of the age of a mother, the, it means there's something wrong.

Right.

Is there a yeast infection? Is there a UTI, right? We jump to all of these worries because that's what's typical for adult women, but it's very different for toddler girls.