Guest Post: Keeping Baby Healthy

Today I am sharing a guest post from Katie Moore, who blogs at Moore from Katie about motherhood. May was pregnancy awareness month and she asked to write a post for Letters from Momma. Due to the craziness in my life right now (mostly a pregnancy and two week visit from my mom), I scheduled her post for while we were at Yosemite. I hope you all enjoy it and check out her blog! Thanks for sharing Katie!

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Keeping Baby Healthy

Newborns are precious gifts, but they can also be somewhat fragile. A newborn is generally much more susceptible to colds and other sicknesses, and these ailments are usually more serious with a newborn baby than they are with adults. For these reasons, it's important to take steps to help protect a new baby during the important first months of life. It's not impossible to keep a new baby healthy, but it does require a bit of care.
Newborn Health During Flu Season
Babies under six months old can't get flu shots, so it is important to take precautions during this time. To help ensure that baby isn’t exposed to many germs, ask all visitors to wash their hands or use sanitizer before holding baby. Another suggestion for when baby goes out in public is to keep baby in a stroller with a blanket or light covering draped over the rain canopy. This helps dissuade strangers from touching the baby or talking to baby and possibly spreading germs through tiny drops of saliva. Additionally, it may be a good idea to stay home during the winter season with baby and shop online.

Newborn Health and SIDS

SIDS, which stands for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, is unexplained sudden death of an infant under 1 year of age. Over 3,000 babies die every year from SIDS, and while there are no guaranteed ways to prevent a SIDS occurrence in the home, there are ways to reduce the risk. Placing a baby on his or her back to sleep is the best way to reduce the risk of SIDS. Other preventative measures include placing a new infant in a crib on a firm mattress without blankets or stuffed animals in the crib, ensuring baby's head and face are uncovered while asleep, refraining from smoking before and after the birth of baby and preventing overheating during sleep.

Other Health Aspects

Rare diseases frequently aren't the things mothers worry about the most, and with good reason. Colds and other common illnesses occur much more frequently. When a baby is born healthy, the thought that a serious disease could affect the child is often far from a mother's mind. To help plan for the future health of a child, cord blood banking is a great choice. Cord blood banking is the collection and storage of the baby’s umbilical cord blood. The collection occurs right after birth and the blood is then shipped to a private facility to be stored. The cord blood could have the potential to help treat a serious illness that may affect the child in the future.

Most importantly, providing a safe home for a new baby is the best way to ensure they will be healthy. This includes an appropriate bassinet or crib, safety plugs over electrical outlets and preventative measures in the home such as removing cords from within a baby's reach.

This article was written by Katie Moore. Katie is an active writer within the blogging community who discusses maternity, motherhood, prenatal health, childbirth and other topics within this niche. If you have any questions or would like to connect with Katie please contact by visiting her blog, Moore From Katie or her twitter @moorekm26