Being a parent means you’re going to make mistakes from time to time. Sometimes, it’s no biggie; other times, it can actually have an impact on your baby. Unfortunately, that’s what happened to one father, who recently shared his story on Reddit.

The new dad, who is only identified as Shamdini, told the story of how he decided to plant some dried pepper seeds on a whim. His newborn was feeding hourly and his wife had been using a nipple shield. When he heard their son crying, he “grabbed the nipple shield, washed it, and placed it on my wife’s nipple for her so she could feed the baby without having to get up.”

“I am the WORST DAD EVER,” he continued. “Little did I know, but some of the pepper oil that got on my hands (I didn’t know dried peppers could still have oil in them) got on the nipple shield.” The baby started to “wail” and “nothing could make him stop,” Shamdini wrote. “We couldn’t figure out what was wrong until my mouth began to burn. I guess I had also gotten my fingers near my mouth.”

He put his fingers in his mouth to try to figure out what kind of pepper had burned his baby. “Judging by the heat in my own mouth and knowledge of the peppers I had dried, I had planted a Carolina Reaper,” he said. “My tender little boy cried bloody murder for at least two and a half hours straight and we did everything we could think of/find on the Internet to stop the burning.”

Luckily, there wasn't too much pepper oil on the nipple shield and the pepper didn’t seem to be to its full potency. “Things could have been much, much worse,” he said. “Now I feel like I should never touch my child again. This whole fatherhood thing is not off to a great start.”

In a later update, though, Shamdini wrote that the baby is doing well, and “acts as if nothing happened.”

It’s so easy to see how something like this could happen, especially when you’re a sleep-deprived parent. But experts say there are a few steps you can take to prevent irritants from accidentally getting into baby's mouth.

It’s incredibly important to use clean hands when you touch a nipple shield



“When you touch something that will go in your baby’s mouth, you’re exposing the baby to everything that is in the environment,” says David Cutler, M.D., a family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California. That can include things that are on the ground, outside contaminants and even animals. “You have to treat your hands just as you would treat that baby,” Dr. Cutler says.

That’s true of nipple shields, breast pumps, pacifiers and anything that will go in the baby’s mouth, says Ashanti Woods, M.D., a pediatrician at Baltimore’s Mercy Medical Center. “Parents should always start by washing their hands in soap and water whenever possible or using hand sanitizer — and making sure to let the sanitizer dry completely, as many are alcohol-based,” Dr. Woods says.

When it comes to nipple shields in particular, he recommends that parents rinse them in cool water first to remove the breast milk, followed by washing them with warm, soapy water. “Finally, the nipple shield should be rinsed in clear water and allow to air-dry with the nipple facing upwards,” he says. “Similar care should be used when washing the rubber nipples of milk bottles."

But you also need to be cautious with pretty much anything your baby will interact with. “There is no such thing as a three-second rule,” Dr. Cutler says. “When things fall on the floor, you have to assume the worst.”

Think of it this way: People have been walking outside and germs that they interacted with there are now on your floor. Even your countertops could contain germs that could give your child a foodborne illness, he says. “You have to assume it’s contaminated in the worst possible way."

Practicing good hand hygiene is crucial when you have a baby

Taking care of baby is all about multitasking, and you may not always have time to stop and wash your hands before picking something up, baby included.

“Because [baby care] requires going back and forth between clean surfaces and dirty surfaces throughout the day, parents should employ the excellent practice of washing their hands multiple times a day just in case they have touched a dirty surface and became interrupted before having a chance to wash their hands,” Dr. Woods says. “This will almost certainly happen every day and parents will prevent cross contamination by implementing this process of clean hand hygiene.”

While you’ve been washing your hands your whole life, many people don’t do the greatest job at it. Just as a refresher, this is what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that you do:

Wet your hands with clean, running water (warm or cold), turn off the tap and apply soap. Lather your hands by rubbing them together with the soap. Be sure to lather the backs of your hands, between your fingers and under your nails. Scrub your hands for at least 20 seconds. (You can sing the “Happy Birthday” song twice if you need a timer.) Rinse your hands well under clean, running water. Dry your hands using a clean towel or let them air-dry.

It's a good idea to wash your hands before you touch your baby or anything that will come into contact with her. “Your hands pick up all the germs in the environment and places you’d never expect a baby’s mouth to go, like furniture and doorknobs,” Dr. Cutler says. “It can all be a possible source of infection.”

To be fair, Shamdini later said in an update to his original post that he did wash his hands before touching the nipple shield, but the pepper oil stubbornly stayed put. Clearly, this is a unique situation — but if you’re handling something spicy and you have a baby, it’s probably best to wear gloves, just to be safe.