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:
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:
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:
After a few days, you will get accustomed to washing your hands frequently. It is one of the most important habits in baby care.
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.
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.
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 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:
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.