Plantain to the rescue!

by Casey
(Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada)

My 2 year old son came screeching downstairs from a potty break with my husband. Hubby asked me to check out a red mark on the baby's leg that looked like a bite. I pulled aside his pants to find a tylenol sized welt on him. I examined it around the scratching, moaning, wiggling baby and figured it must have been a spider (they are very very common in our house near Lake Ontario). By the time I'd determined this (despite almost immediate application of an ice pack) it had expanded to dime sized. As half the household just left for camping, I knew the After Bite was not in the house. Remembered using plantain on bites as a kid (mum's a hippy), but couldn't remember what to do. I went looking for spider bite remedies on Google and stumbled across this page! Grabbed the plantain, (luckily had just picked some that afternoon for a snail habitat for my son. My in-laws have been spraying the lawns all summer to get rid of things like plantain) washed it, chewed it, and stuck it on. The baby instantly stopped whining. Before I could get a bandaid on, the redness had gone down. It's been 10 minutes and he isn't even scratching now. Old ways are good ways sometimes, and they still work! lol