baby tips Archives • Parent Influence

Keep Illness Away From Your Baby This Winter

No parent wants their baby to suffer from any kind of illness if it can be helped – and it can almost always be helped. If you are a new parent and you want to make sure that you are protecting your baby as well as you can this winter, then there is plenty you will need to take on board. It can be surprisingly challenging to ensure that your baby is kept away from disease during the colder months, but with the right approach, you should be able to ensure that you are at least minimising any risks which might be inherent. Without further ado, let’s look at some of the best ways to keep your child healthy this winter.

Hand Washing

As a parent to an infant, you just can’t afford not to wash your hands regularly. Although we all know that hand washing is essential for health reasons, so many people fail to really do it correctly. With a child in the mix, however, this kind of behavior can actually be lethally dangerous. You need to make sure that you are washing your hands regularly, especially at the usual times you normally would. But you also need to make sure that you are actually cleaning them with the proper technique.

Proper hand washing technique is something that unfortunately escapes a lot of people, but it is likely to be essential if you want to keep your baby as healthy and free of germs as possible. A strong hand washing routine should take around two minutes to complete, and you should make sure that you are really getting in under the nails and in between the fingers accurately. There is a huge noticeable difference between doing this and just giving your hands a quick rinse, and you need to make sure you are doing it just right. It is likely to make a massive difference to how successfully you keep your baby away from any potentially harmful germs.

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You will also need to try and make sure that others who come into contact with your baby are keeping their hands clean. This is much more difficult to police, but polite requests should usually be more than enough in most cases. Remember too that you can only do a certain amount to protect your baby, and to a certain degree you have to accept that you can’t control the germs. That being said, proper hand washing should make a world of difference.

Regular Cleaning

Naturally enough, it is critical to ensure that you are cleaning your baby regularly. If you are a first-time parent, you might be surprised at how confusing the whole realm of cleaning your baby can actually be, at least to begin with. But with some simple research, you should be able to get on top of it in no time at all. For a start, you need to make sure that you are cleaning your baby at the right amount of regular intervals. You only really need to clean your baby around three to four times a week, but if you want to bathe them every evening, then there is absolutely no harm in that. You don’t want to subject them to baths more often than that, however.

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Be sure to check the temperature well with your elbow, and then place them on one foot at a time, and gradually so on until they are in entirely. Then it’s just a case of making sure that you are gentle but thorough – a fine line which you just need to try and find yourself. Also ensure that you clean every part of their body, including shampooing their head. As well as being generally good hygiene practice, it also helps to treat cradle cap and other conditions so is definitely a good idea. The more thoroughly you clean your baby, the less likely it is that they will pick up anything over the winter months. Just make sure to keep them warm throughout the bathing process, and especially after.

Be Careful Of Crowds

It is common for new parents to want to take their baby everywhere they go and show them off. It is likely that you will experience this same feeling, but for the sake of their health, it is a good idea to try and minimize the amount you take them out to see lots of people. You don’t want to hole them up inside, of course, but you should just be wary of how many people are coming into contact with them. The fewer, the better, especially over winter, as this only makes it much less likely that they will pick up any germs or illnesses. As long as you are conscious of any crowds of people, you should find that your baby is healthy for much longer, and hopefully won’t get sick over winter at all. If your baby does start to develop an illness of some kind, then you definitely want to make sure you keep them inside, as this is the safest way to deal with it.

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Vaccines

Something you really can’t afford to overlook is the issue of vaccination. If you are serious about keeping your baby as healthy as possible, then you will want to make sure that you get them vaccinated in all of the major diseases. This is the safest way to keep them from getting genuinely very ill – something that no parent wants for their child, after all. If you vaccinate them, you can be sure that you have done everything you can to keep them protected as well as possible for the entirety of the winter months. Without vaccinations, you are keeping your baby open to vulnerability for many diseases and illnesses, so it is definitely a good idea to ensure that you get this done as soon as possible.

As long as you follow the above advice, you should find that you are able to keep your baby as safe as possible over the colder months.

Sleep Strategies For Baby, The Must-Haves For Parents

Having a new baby is going to take adjustment of all kinds. There are few things that can prepare you for the new responsibility, for the sudden room you have to make in the budget and for the sleep you’re not going to be having. Sleep training is easily one of the more difficult parts of being a new parent, but you can do it with a little help from wisdom that’s been passed from mother to mother.

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Take a seat

There are few things that can help a baby get to sleep as much as getting relaxed. A lot of parents will walk around with their baby or even take them out for a drive in their car seat to help them get to that state. However, it can be as simple as getting a seat like those from www.therockingchaircompany.com. Rocking your baby has been proven to be great for helping them doze off. However, having to do it constantly yourself will get tiring and frustrating for a parent, so get something that can take the weight off your shoulders a little.

Be light strategic

Your child is very sensitive to light. We all are, really, with key hormones in our brain ruling over sleep directly linked to light exposure. In the daytime, you might be tempted to cut the lights if they show signs of napping. However, this can get in the way of their body clock, so don’t do it. At night, you can slowly ease them into nighttime sleepiness with lights like those shown at www.heavy.com with dimmers attached. Turning off the light and just waiting for them to take their cue won’t work as well as taking the time to induce drowsiness.

Midnight snack

If your baby is having more trouble sleeping for long stretches at night, then a dream feed can really help. It might seem counter-intuitive to wake them up for a feed, but it’s a clever way of managing their body’s needs. Babies can only really have one long sleep a day and most often it’s hunger that gets in the way. A dream feed can help them sate that need so it doesn’t wake them more fully. Keep the lights dim and gently feed your baby before setting them back down.

Practice some restraint

As a new parent, it’s easy to be hypersensitive to a baby calling, especially at night. Those maternal triggers will fire and you’ll be tempted to go make sure everything’s alright. You shouldn’t ignore your baby if there’s sustained crying. However, using a baby monitor to suddenly rush in at every sound, or even brief cries, can be disruptive not only to the child. It can make you more alert than you need to be, getting in the way of your own night’s sleep due to stress. If you do want to check in on them, just be sure to keep lights dim and don’t look them in the eyes if they’re not sleeping fully.

Above all else, remember to treasure those nights where they sleep right through. They will be rare at first, so take advantage of them and try not to be a “helicopter parent” when they do.

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Being Aware Of Safety Traps When Taking Care Of The Baby

When a baby enters your life, you have to make serious lifestyle changes to accommodate for the beautiful new bundle of joy. You must not forget that although the child looks and feels like any other normal human body, they are in fact incredibly fragile. If you don’t know your own strength, you could end up hurting or possibly damaging the baby. Becoming a parent is a blessing, but it’s also a full-time job the second your bring the child home. They are solely your responsibility, and the choices you make will impact the baby directly. Everyone runs into challenges, but those who are unprepared often experience the most difficulty when trying to settle in to regularly caring for the baby. There are a few things you should consider, to make your job easier and safer for your little one.

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Make regular night checks

One of the most vulnerable times for any baby is when they’re left completely alone. Of course, this happens when the baby is sleeping at night. If you don’t have enough room in your bedroom to have the baby’s cot next to your bed, there’s no other reliable way to check up on him or her without a baby sound machine. You can hear any distressing calls or cries during the night, while the baby is in the next room or at the opposite end of the home from your bedroom. The sound machine will alert you according to the decibel level, whereby you can then go and physically check up on your baby to soothe them of any stress or discomfort the baby might be feeling. Sound machines are also portable, so whether you’re going on holiday or a trip to a domestic resort, you can always take them with you.

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Train the family dog

If you have a family pet, this new arrival into the home is going to greatly intrigue them. It’s very rare that pets become hostile to newborn babies, but it has been known to happen. When you bring in the baby, keep the dog outside of the room and the house. Rest the baby in the cot or in a buggy, and then let the dog in a while keeping control of it with either a hand on the collar or blocking its path as you get closer to the baby. It will want to sniff and smell the baby and try to familiarise itself with this new creature that it has never met. Allow the dog to sniff the baby from a distance but don’t allow it to lick or touch the baby just yet. Slowly but surely the dog will calm down, and just see the baby as another one of the family. However, don’t leave the baby and the dog alone together and always make sure your pet is not being aggressive to the child.

Many young and first-time parents fall into obvious safety traps when caring for their newborn baby. However, you have to change the way you think and your lifestyle so that you can accommodate the baby into your lifestyle. Integrating the dog to be careful around the baby takes time and constant vigilance. Monitoring the baby’s comfort level during the night is crucial to help you avoid things like cot rash.