My son is sick again.

I can’t believe that my chubby little baby just seems to pick up one little virus after the other like he does. Perhaps it’s because he’s the youngest of 5 children?

I suppose, even though I clean and disinfect, our house is full of germs. Poor little guy. His immunity will be awesome once he develops some resisitence to all this, but until then. Whew.

My son just recovered from an upper respiratory infection a few days ago and now, he has some sort of tummy bug. All of the kids in the neighborhood have the tummy bug, and I’ve sighted many parents purchasing Pedialyte at the pharmacy when I went in the other day. I took note and bought some myself just in case. I bought some Tylenol too for him because my supplies were getting low.

Today, I was at the doctor with my other child, and I asked her about it all. Was there any sort of cleaning product I had somehow overlooked? The kids use hand sanitizer and I have disinfectant wipes. What was I doing wrong? Why is my young son always sick?

The answer she said is because he’s the youngest of a bunch of kids and is building up immunity to big kid germs. She told me that children who first go to daycare often get sick frequently until they build up immunity. I noticed this when my oldest went to kindergarten too–she was sick quite frequently until she built up immunity to “kindergarten kid germs”. The doctor assures me that, given time, my son will be healthy and immune to these different viruses.

I’ll keep on using the hand sanitizer and I’ll continue to clean and disinfect. I’ll try to not be so hard on myself when my son gets sick though. After all, germs are everywhere.

Is it just me, or do children usually come down with some sort of illness around the holidays? Perhaps it’s the change in weather, the stress, or just the amount of activity and changes in the schedule, but I seem to remember more “sick” holidays than “well” holidays. Then again, I suppose a Christmas spent with Tylenol is more memorable than one without.

I wasn’t surprised when yesterday, our 9 month old started with a “cold”. Today, it’s turned into a full blown virus. No fever, but stomach distress, and a slight rash in addition to the sniffles. Yup, we’re on our way to another sick Christmas.

In fact, this is a memorable event in many ways. Firstly, it is my baby’s first “real” illness. He’s made it 9 months without any sort of sniffle or anything. Isn’t that awesome? And, this is my first time without being able to use that great infant decongestant stuff since it was taken off the shelves a few months ago.

My oldest is 14, and I always used those drops! I swear they worked when you used them correctly, unlike what the medical professionals claim. When I called the product hotline, the rep on the other end of the phone claimed that they were taking the product off the shelf because it had come to their attention that some parents were using their product incorrectly and overdosing their children so they would sleep. This leads me to a bunch of thoughts. Firstly, just now you realize this? This product has been out for decades and just NOW you figure this out? Secondly, again, why do we all suffer because a few people choose to do the wrong thing?

I digress…..so this cold, my son will use the old stand by. He’ll get the salt water drops and have the mucous aspirated out of his nose. He loves that! I have the vaporizer running, and I have the Vicks Rub for Infants which has helped him. And, when he is really uncomfortable, I’ll give him some tylenol.

I’m sure we’ll make it thru this first cold. Hopefully, he’ll even be well enough to celebrate his first Christmas.