Children, especially babies, are goopy things.

They come out goopy, their goopy pants need changing, and if you’re like us and have a little one with a blocked tear duct then you’ll be constantly lovingly wiping the goop from their eye.

For this reason, why Gwyneth Paltrow named her high-end lifestyle website ‘Goop’ has always remained a mystery to us.

Wiping Lachie’s eye goop away multiple times a day has just become part of our daily routine. Same with answering well-meaning strangers’ questions about what’s wrong with our child. Because blocked tear ducts are mostly harmless but definitely not pretty.

“No, it’s not conjunctivitis.”

Imagine your beautiful little bub’s eyeball covered in a soft creamy layer of… okay, we’ll stop. Just picture goop. All over one of their eyeballs [imagine the sad face emoji here].

It is enough to make strangers who nestle around your pram to pause and say, “aww, what a cute little baby…” switch to “uggghhh Dear God what’s wrong with his eye!!” in an instant.

Okay so not that intense. But it’s noticeable.

So, no B.S – when the team from Little approached us to talk about Little Eyes we literally danced around our office because, truth time, when brand collaborations come through the process is we normally take some time to get familiar with a product and then decide if it’s meaningful to our lives (and therefore yours).

That’s not the case with Little. We LOVE their Little Eyes wipes. They are like gold in our household. We have boxes all over the place. They come individually wrapped, so it’s easy to throw in handbags, camera bags, in the car, in the TV room, by the kitchen. Day-care even has a spare box on hand for eye goop emergencies.

“Thank you so much for your care. Yes, we’ve taken him to the doctor. It’s a blocked tear-duct. He was born with it.”

We don’t ever consider Lachie’s runny goopy eyes to be an emergency though. This is 100% because we spent the first 10 months of parenthood stressing about it and going to multiple doctors to check that it is indeed a block-duct and not an infection.

You can only go to the clinic a certain number of times before your doctor literally just says, “I can’t help you, you have to wait until he’s one to do the corrective surgery.”

So we’ve continued on, armed with our Little Eyes on hand to wipe and clean his eye at every opportunity.

And because Little Eyes are silky soft wipes and contain soothing chamomile extract it’s something that we know makes Lachie feel more comfortable.

We notice the difference because when he was first born we just used cotton balls and regular saline solution and the result was always a crying baby.

But with Little Eyes he is genuinely more relaxed after. Plus he looks nicer, right up to his first birthday. Which is more than just an age milestone but the age that we can finally start telling people…

“He’s booked in for corrective surgery.”

After turning 1 we were able to book Lachie in for surgery. This is when an Ophthalmologist ‘pops’ the membrane of Lachie’s tear duct under general anaesthetic.

It’s not ideal but we know it’s going to make him 100% more comfortable.

(For the people wondering: Thse are lipstick marks from kisses on his face, not bruises or marks.)

It’s weird the kind of emotions you go through as a parent. You sway between being very grateful that people are concerned that your child is okay but also battling the constant judgement that inevitably comes from raising a small cute human.

When people ask about his eye we want to say “Hey random-stranger-at-the-mall, look, we love Lachie. We love him so much we don’t know what we’d do with ourselves if he wasn’t on the planet. Let alone in any discomfort. Nobody cares more about him than us.”

But in the end we always just end up repeating the above 3 statements. It’s a blocked duct, we’ve been to multiple doctors, he’s booked in for treatment.”

Hopefully over the next 6 months we’ll have a baby that doesn’t need constant eye wiping. In the meantime though we want to say, thank you to all the kind well-meaning people asking about his eyeball. But you can stop now (which will never happen).

And to Little for the great wipes. And for sponsoring this post (we use a lot of those boxes so the ones they sent have come very handy).

You can pick up Little Eyes for yourself at your local pharmacy. Just look for the new Little packaging with Owlby, the Little guardian owl, there to help your little one feel better!