Thursday, March 19, 2009

How to Prevent Your Babies from Getting Sick

Many people ask me if I am nervous leaving Abigail in the church nursery as much as I do. I teach 4th grade girls Sunday School, AWANA, and GA's so I do drop her off a good bit. I do get nervous dropping her off just because of all the sicknesses, but I drop her off to invest in eternity. Now, that I know how bad it is for a baby to be sick I probably worry more. In my opinion, for the first 3 months (or until they start crawling around) they have a less likely change of getting sick. They change babies on a difference table than the other little ones, so as long as the person who is holding her the whole time in the room is not sick, they should be ok. However, you baby is going to get sick, and use it for a time to glorify God and pray to Him (also I would recommend planning to get out of the house once your husband gets home so you have at least some sort of break). He is allowing the sickness for a reason. God works all things out for good for those who love Him.

"we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
Romans 5:2-5 (ESV)

Our suffering has a purpose. What hope God gives us through His Word and through His Son, and His Spirit!

Here are my tips to Prevent Your Baby from getting Sick:
  1. First and foremost, pray pray and pray some more. Sometimes when my babies are just started to be sick and congested, I lay hands on them and pray in Jesus name that He will heal them.
  2. Be crazy about hand sanitizer and washing hands. I currently have Vicks Early Defense foaming hand sanitizer that promised to fight germs for 3 hours. I make Jackson put it on his hands before he goes into a childcare situation and right when he gets out. I am way obsessed with hand sanitizer for both me and him after Jackson got sick 7 fun filled times last winter. One time I even put it on Abigail's hands but would not recommend doing that till they start crawling around.
  3. For babies spray Lysol before putting them down on any surface to change their diaper. I actually carry Lysol spray in my diaper bag.
  4. Try to give them a bath at night when they have been in daycare situations if at all possible.
  5. When your baby starts to have congestion in his nose, start blowing his nose out with saline solution at least in the morning and before they go to bed. I actually did this a couple of weeks ago when they both probably had a virus and the congestion just went away for the first time ever without turning into an infection.
  6. Make sure your babies are getting enough rest. If you see your babies are starting to get sick plan for extra times for rest. Children need at least 10 hours of straight sleep and most only get 8 and suffer with extreme exhaustion which makes them more likely to catch illnesses.
  7. Make sure your little one is on a daily vitamin. Jackson still on polyvisol vitamin drops and Abigail will be getting on them as soon as she can.
What about you, do you have any more tips on how to prevent your baby from getting sick?

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I have been thinking of writing a similar post but I don't want to jinx myself (not that I believe in Jinxing)! Our daughter has only been sick once this winter, and it only lasted a very short while. I attribute most of our Abigail's heightened immune defenses to several things. You said sleep is important and I totally agree. I have had to fight long and hard to get people to see that her sleeping from 6:30 pm to 6:30 am is a healthy thing! She is also still breastfed at 14 months old. I also do not give her sugar in great quantities. Obviously, she eats fruit but sugar outside of nature is discouraged in our house (HFCS, etc). She hasn't even had juice yet and I don't see much point in adding that, since she doesn't know what she is missing.

I feed her lots of fresh green things and give her (and myself) green smoothies (with Kale and lots of fruit) regularly. I also try to stay away from as much processed food as possible and try to give her food as close to nature (what God intended) as possible.

Wow, sorry this got so long. Perhaps I should write a blog post! :) You mentioned the most important thing, and that is, of course, prayer! Glad to hear your kids are well!

Emily Wallace said...

Thanks so much Jamie. Eating healthy is definitely something I should add to the list. It is so important!

Melinda said...

Avoid walmart at all costs! I really think all germs begin life in wally world...Micah gets sick everytime we go there.