When you are a parent, you are doing everything in your power to protect your newborn baby, so many people can make you feel you are being over protective.
For example, when your friends say that their children have a cold, but nothing major, they can still come and visit you and your baby.
Or when you go for a play date in the park, and some kid has a cough and green snot running at full steam from both nostrils.
Even when your dinner date comes over and says that the kids won’t eat too much since they all had gastro all week.
You must think inside no, no and no.
Stay home if your children are sick. Don’t come to play, don’t come to the park or send them to the kindy and most importantly don’t kiss and cuddle my children.
You definitely don’t want those people to spread the germs, since you have to work, and you don’t want to spend a week caring for vomiting youngsters, working from home while still paying for childcare. What’s worse, you can end up sick in bad too.
All this may seem nothing seriuos to you, and the paranoid mums that run every 5 minutes to the doctors and protect their children from germs are silly because we all know we can’t keep them in a bubble forever.
All you have to do is hear this horror story about the UK mum Claire Henderson and her newborn daughter Brooke. After the baby was kissed on the mouth, developed the herpes virus on her lips, cheeks and chin and spent five days in a hospital.
Luckily, the baby survived. This virus can be fatal for babies under 3 months, which was shown last year in Queensland. Baby Eloise Lampton was affected just a few days after she was born and couldn’t survive the virus.
After what happend to her baby girl, Claire Henderson wrote on social media: “The moral of the story is DO NOT let anyone kiss your newborn’s mouth, even if they don’t look like they have a cold sore”
These kind of stories makes you ask the question- why on earth would you visit little unimmunised, helpless, defenceless newborn if you have a cold sore? On the top of it, you would kiss her and on the lips, no less.
There is no excuse for it.
Babies are unimmunised for six weeks against most of the germs that the olders carry around every day. A runny nose or a sore throat may seem to you harmless, but to that baby and to that baby’s family could mean the difference between life and death.
So please respect a child’s right to good health.
Everyone with a newborn baby should be comfortable saying that you can visit their baby after baby’s six-week shots, instead of politely agree to let them visit and then deal with the consequences which can be fatal.
We need to stop looking the parents who wrap their children in a cotton wool as an overprotective and paranoid parents, instead we should understand that that is the right thing to do.
No one should make you feel guilty for expressing caution and for giving your baby the best chance to live a healthy life, in fact, it is your responsibility.
So no, do not come for visit if your childen are not immunised, don’t let sick children near your baby and most importantly, do not let anyone kiss your newborn on the lips.
You simply cannot afford being polite when your baby’s life is at risk.