Our first cold :(

AJ getting suctioned by our super awesome Nose Frida

All 3 of us are sick.  I'm pretty sure we got it from the pediatrician's office last week (which as we know, are crawling with germs).  Sort of surprising, since I work at that clinic and have NEVER gotten sick.  But I guess I don't do my rounds in the peds module either. Oh well.

Well, I'm pleased to report that AJ is the least sick of the 3 of us.  M is dealing with a bad bad cough and I'm a couple of days behind him.  But the baby?  Super mild symptoms - his cough was accompanied by a little mucus and that started 5 days ago.  And now it's gone.  

I guess it's not that surprising.  I read that breastfed infants tend to be the least likely in a home to get sick since they're gulping down mom's milk which is lush with newly-made antibodies to whatever germs are in house.  If they do catch whatever the rest of the family has, they tend to have a much more mild version.  I hope they're right and he really IS done with the cold.

So, you ask me.  How did we survive the last few days with the cold?  Here's our toolkit.

--The Advice line.  I know that cough in a newborn can be a pretty serious sign of something wrong.  Especially when we live in a part of the country where pertussis is not uncommon.  So one of the first things we did was check in with the advice nurse at KP.  Yeah, he was doing fine, no changes in # of diapers, eating well, and no fever.  But it NEVER hurts to check in.  As I expected, I was told to monitor him carefully.  But the following things really helped too.

--Nose Frida (see image above).  The be-all, end-all of snot suckers.  There were times that I wanted to pick it up and use it for myself.  I love this thing so much more than your traditional bulb syringes.  So does baby, by the way.  Try not to use it more than 2x a day - I'm sure it still irritates those little nasal passageways. If nothing suctions out but baby is still struggling, it may help to put saline drops in and try again.  

--Humidifier.  I actually pulled this out of the box sitting in the closet at 3 AM on Saturday morning and assembled the whole thing in 5 minutes while M held our sick kiddo.  Totally worth it.  I could tell it kept his mucus secretions nice and thin so it was easy for him to cough it up.  5 days later, it's still running, but mostly for the adults in the house who are still sick :(

--Frequent breastfeeding.  The idea here is increasing baby's fluid intake.  Just like how when adults get sick, babies need more fluid too when they're sick.

--Increasing fluids (me).  For obvious reasons, even if I'm not being counted on producing upwards 40 ounces of milk a day for my little leech

--Increased nap times during day. 

-- Which comes with cuddling.  I noticed over the past week that AJ's independence during sleep and nap time has regressed.  He seems to be want to be held A LOT.  For a while he had been sleeping 5 hour stretches at a time at night without waking, but now he's back down to waking q2 hours or so.  Oh well, we're working on it.  I'm told by a mom with an older infant that a time will come when he no longer wants to cuddle/sleep with you...so savor those moments.  Savoring.