Little Miss Petri Dish

My advice to those of you thinking about or on the brink of becoming parents… Stock up on cold medicine. Not for the little one, for yourself! Besides, there’s not really any cold medicine you can give your little germ trap.

Now, you have to remember that we chose to put Finley into daycare at four months of age. Those parents out there who have a different set up may not have such an exposure to the sicknesses. But, the good thing for us is that this exposure - especially for her - is more than likely going to keep her a little more healthy when she gets older. At least we hope that’s the case.

It doesn’t make worrying about her any easier(I’m not sure anything would, anyway). The thing is that we can deal with the occasional cough and runny nose. It’s the fevers and the non-stop coughing that start to take its toll… On her AND us. There’s nothing worse than laying her down in her crib for the night and hearing heavy, rasping breathing.

And we’re limited to what we can do for her. That is, until we think it’s bad enough that we have to go see a doctor. She can’t have cough syrup or lozenges - I’d really like to see her try one of those. She’d either try to swallow it whole or play with it for an hour – The best we can do for her is a saline spray in the nose (which constitutes torture, in her book) or some children’s Tylenol.

The worst part is that she can’t tell us what’s wrong. The only clues we get are the runny nose, the cough, the raspy breathing and an unusually long bout of grumpiness. In her own way, being especially cranky means, “Hey guys! I’m not feeling very good, here.”

So, we wipe the nose a hundred times (payback, I’m sure for all the times my family had to wipe my toddler nose) and give her just a little extra love at bedtime(That’s the easiest and best part!) And she sleeps, for a while. Hopefully she’s not dreaming of giant Kleenexes® covering her face.

If she has a cough, it usually gets her up a few times in the night. But for the most part, her little immune system is cranking away while she sleeps, pushing out all the bad germs. Usually this means that the Momma or the Poppa will take on the cold - Someone in our party of three will have a cold once a week – or it will just lie dormant inside her, waiting for one of the other germ carriers at daycare to slobber on a toy or sneeze into a face and start the whole thing all over again. Gesundheit.