It was Mia’s first week of school last week and what better way to end it than taking home a virus.
We already knew pre-school and play school is a wonderland of viruses and kids there can just exchange colds, coughs, flu, stomach bugs and what-have-you but I wasn’t expecting Mia to get one early in the game. 🙂 Well I’m not really sure where she got it but that was the only place she went to last week without us. Anyway, she showed signs of colds Friday night (which we thought was just allergies) and it turned to a full-blown snot-fest on Saturday. So we loaded her up with Vitamin C, increased her fluid intake and prayed hard that the little baby won’t get infected – but of course that’s almost impossible -at the end of the weekend, Mia, Mika and I were all down with colds and cough.
How to Survive When Kids Get Colds and Cough.
When Mia was a baby, we dreaded her getting anything close to colds because it would mean crying bouts and sleepless nights for us all. She just couldn’t sleep when she had it. Until now, it’s still fairly difficult when she’s sick because she tends to get very cranky especially during the night and Michael will end up carrying her and rocking her to sleep (very hard since she’s almost 18 kilos now. We really had to look for ways on how we could make her better or at least feel a bit better. Here are some tips we got from research and from family/friends that worked for her, and we’re now doing for Mika too:
Number one remedy and cure is still increase water or fluid intake. Fortunately for Mia, this is not hard, we just have to keep reminding her and offering her to drink water and give her fruit juice every meal and snacks so she can get rid of the virus. When she really loads up on fluids, her colds would leave after three days or so. A lot of parents I know have a difficult time giving their babies or kids water since it’s tasteless and uninteresting but you just had to try and look for ways which would make your kids drink. Try different temperatures, ice cold, tap, warm – and find out which your child likes – in our case both kids like it cold. Also, choose a water container that fits your kid – better yet let them choose what they like! Although I believe it’s still best to get a water bottle since it’s less prone to spill, and very handy. Sippy cups for little toddlers are too difficult to carry along – once Mia learned how to drink from the straw we just got her a bottle with a built-in straw….
