Giving birth to a healthy baby is just the beginning of an exciting journey. The next phase is keeping your child healthy and strong. Babies are susceptible to illnesses during the early stages of their development because their immune systems are not sufficiently developed. Therefore, you should observe proper hygiene to keep the baby’s environment clean and germ-free to reduce the risk of exposing their fragile bodies to disease-causing pathogens.
Here are some simple rules you can implement to take care of your baby’s health:
Keep your Baby Clean
When your baby is clean, you not only protect him from disease but also make him pleasant company. To be honest, you wouldn’t want to hang around him when he is dirty and smelly. A few points to keep tabs with as you clean your baby:
- Baths: Bathing him twice or thrice per week in warm water will be enough. Over-agitating your baby’s skin by bathing him every day is actually not a good idea.
- Ears, eyes, and nose: Keep these three areas clean to ensure that your baby feels comfortable and to protect him from possible illnesses.
- Nail clipping: Keep the nails trimmed to avoid harboring germs under them. Use a baby-sized clipper.
- Diapers: Change the diapers regularly to prevent infections and rashes. Remember to wash your hands after every diaper change.
- Wash your baby’s hands when he is about to sleep or eat.
Wash your hands regularly
This rule applies to you and anyone who comes into contact with the baby. You should regularly clean your hands with antibacterial soap and running water to kill the germs that you may be harboring that can make your baby ill. General rules to observe when washing your hands are:
- Dry your hands before you handle the baby, his food, and his toys especially if you are down with a cold.
- If you wash your hands with cold water, do not handle the baby directly with your freezing hands. Use warm water if you can help it.
- Wash your hands after handling pets and after changing the diapers.
- Wash your hands after handling raw food, after coming back into the house from outside, or going to the bathroom yourself.
After a few days, you will get accustomed to washing your hands frequently. It is one of the most important habits in baby care.
Keep Your House Clean
You don’t have to clean your house thoroughly with disinfectant and bleach every day because that will not last; you will get tired considering how little you sleep now with the baby around.
Instead, you can start by paying attention to the surfaces that your baby’s food comes into contact with. So you should keep the kitchen table, utensils, and baby feeding kits like breast pump clean. Use hot water to clean the utensils and if possible, buy sanitizing equipment. If you are new to this or have previous bad experiences, head on to LittleAngels.org to learn a great deal about the best equipment and baby care hacks.
As you clean the house, ensure that you eliminate the dust and pet fur. Keep the air clean by using HEPA filters on your air conditioner. A clean home is your first defense against all kinds of baby illnesses.
Large groups of people
Most people love babies. They want to touch them, make faces at them, and hold them. It is okay when the baby is a bit older – usually older than six weeks – because his immune system will be more robust.
However, if your baby is younger than that, he may not be ready to interact with large groups of people because the odds that he will be exposed to someone with an illness will be high. These are everyday infections like the flu, common cold, or digestive complications that are relatively trivial to an adult but devastating to the baby’s fledgling immune system.
If you cannot turn away a group of people who happen to stop by to see the baby, make them wash their hands first and restrict the interaction if there are sick visitors.
Keep yourself healthy
If you can help it, keep yourself healthy because you being sick really puts the baby at risk of getting infected. Her immune system will not be as strong and adept as yours and she may take even the slightest of illnesses particularly badly. Part of keeping yourself healthy is not getting infected and the other part is protecting your child if you become ill.
You can start by washing your hands regularly and staying away from friends who have colds, flu, and coughs.
Pets Around the Baby
Pets are the family member that poses the greatest risk to the health of your baby – mostly cats and dogs because they tend to move around a lot. They pick up germs from many places when they go snooping around. On top of that, they shed fur and dander which can pose a serious health issue to your toddler if she comes into contact with it.
Here are a few quick tips on how to deal with pets when you have a baby in the house:
- Do not let the animals anywhere near the toddler when you are not around. You, therefore, want to ensure that your baby is not left alone with them or that they do not access the crib.
- Constantly vacuum the pet’s fur and dander around the area where your baby sleeps. It’s just a precaution because people carry them unknowingly.
- Wash your hands before you touch your baby or feed him if you have been touching your pet. Instruct your other family members to do the same.
Even as you keep your baby and his environment clean, there is such a thing as excessively clean – which doctors think is counter-productive. As your kid grows older, you need to expose her to germs to get her used to fending off disease and reduce the chance of her developing allergies. But this should come much later when our baby is slightly older. While the baby is younger than 28 days old, keep her environment as sterile as possible.