Leading Arlington Family Clinic Offers Tips For Staying Healthy In The Company Of A Sick Child

By Michelle Edwards


If your kid comes home with a stomach upset, cold or flu, it is time to get your guards up. After seeing your doctor, you want to contain the germs of the little champ and protect the other family members from also getting sick. Here are some basic tips from a top rated Arlington family clinic that you may find helpful.

Most kids, even those that are often happy drinking the last drops of juice from their friends cups are not generous. They are even so great fans of sharing and spreading viruses and bacteria. A recent study conducted by the University of Arizona shows that mothers face three times the risk of getting sick when nursing their sneezing, sniffing kids than a trained garbage collector. Given these statistics, you may want to put up a super germ-fighting game before nursing your little fellow.

For you to protect yourself, you must spend plenty of time at the sink. Washing your hands regularly with quality antiseptic soap will reduce your odds of getting infected by your kids illness by about 50%. Make a point of taking at least 20 seconds to do a thorough job and also use a quality alcohol-based hand sanitizer right after.

Hand sanitizers are knights in shining armor. You want to stock the product in just about every area of your home and even in your handbag. Children have a thing for sneezing on their mothers faces just when you cannot find a sink with running water nearby. Your hand sanitizers can assist you in squishing the germs way before they make you ill.

The cooking area should be off-limits to any sniffing and sneezing little fellow. In case bacteria spreads to your tables and countertops, this means that everybody in your family will be at greater risk of falling ill. Older children know the drill and they may wash their hands before accessing the kitchen. While this may be the case, food storage areas like the refrigerator should remain out of bounds.

Another good tip is to use hot water to do your ailing kids laundry. While using cold water is more eco-friendly, Mother Nature makes exceptions when moms are nursing their little ones. Hot water can help you free the laundry of germs that cause flus and stomach infections. You can use chlorine bleach on the whites and a non-chlorine, colorfast bleach on dark colored clothes to protect them from running or fading because of the hot water.

If you are doing the laundry of a sick kid, you must keep in mind that what you are dealing with is germy stuff, capable of infecting you with nasty diseases. That said, do not touch your nose or mouth. Mothers know only too well that their kids use their garments as handkerchiefs when nobody is seeing them. Use some bleach to run a hot cycle on the laundry machine to disinfect it after use.

There are practices that may seem a little obsessive, though they are necessary. In fact, also cut down on cuddles, temporarily prohibit sharing and buy a lot of disinfectant and use it to scrub doorknobs, remote controls, toilet handles, and other spots that are frequently touched by everyone in your home. This is the only way to keep the kids germs contained.




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