I held Elizabeth Grace's hands so that others would not touch them when they approached her. I blew MY BREATH over her face since I knew she was always breathing my air but the stranger's breath might have RSV floating around, so I blew it away. :-) I often waved a magazine over her face if someone had come too close and breathed on her. In an elevator, I would turn her to the wall. I always held my own hands together to prevent myself from touching anything including table tops, people, napkin dispensers ... I made sure I touched as little as possible having my family open doors or whatever I could think of. Once she caught a cold, I TRIED to breath her breath so that I would build immunities against whatever the illness was and pass the antibodies via breastfeeding. I washed a receiving blanket with her laundry, put her laundry on it as I folded it with WASHED hands. I would cover her laundry if someone walked through as I was folding it. (I have a daycare in my home so this was more than 'family'.) I never kissed her face! It was nearly a year before I actually kissed my sweetie's lips! Now at 2 yrs old, when she has a Dr appt, I tuck her coat under my arm so it does not touch anything. I sit in seats w/o arms so that we do not accidentally touch them AND I wash our hands as soon as we get into the room. I keep a box of tissues in my car for opening doors. I need to start keeping one in my pocket for leaving.
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1) I got caller ID and if it was someone I thought might want to visit, I would not answer 2) I secluded all 3 of us 3) If someone came to the door (even family) I pretended not to be home kept quiet and out of sight 4) Stayed from family gatherings and got criticized for being a lunatic 5) did not let anyone touch her clothes 6) would not let any other child play with her toys. I want to add, I didn't take her toys from other children just hid them when other children were around (would never be mean to any child) 7) If it fell on the floor even in my own home (and it was any clothing or cloth that came near her)it went in garbage or was washed in javex
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If we have to leave the house with the boys for a doctors appointment at the hospital then I put them in their stroller and cover the entire stroller with a blanket and tell everybody who asks about them that they are sleeping! Also when we go to doctors appointments I cover the entire exam table with a blanket from home and don't let them sit on that "paper" (who knows if it's been changed) or the table itself.
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I don't take the elevator when I go to see her pediatrician, I take the stairs to avoid getting stuck on the elevator with another person. Also, I put mittens on her hands when we go out so people won't touch her hands, and if someone does happen to touch her hands (happened only once..... I about died) I rushed her to the bathroom and washed her hands. I now keep anti-bacterial hand wipes for her and my hands in her diaper bag for when we are out. Of course, I only take her out for appointments so she doesn't get out often. At the peds office we wait outside rather than in the waiting room and make the receptionist come out to tell us the doc is ready to see us. I don't let anybody come into the house, and I scrub my hands after I get the mail.
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I dress them in clothes w/long sleeves and pull the sleeves over their hands. Last week I stupidly left the netting off the stroller while we were in the hospital and someone in the elevator grabbed Tess' hands! UGH!! I scrubbed her down right away. Usually we take the staff elevator to avoid germy people in the visitor's one! We got 2 stroller bar activity things for Christmas and I am seriously thinking about returning them because from my first child, I know these things are kid magnets!!! Call me crazy but I don't even like my 4 yr old to play w/the babies' things! And the poor kid keeps trying the share her toys with the babies and leaves Barbies, etc. in their carseat, bouncer all the time!
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Always bring along baby or handy wipes or that antibacterial soap so you don't need to use with water and use them frequently. I kept John Henry out of Target his first winter -- I never see so many hacking runny nosed kids as I see there during the winter. I had one of those cart baby seats with a handle cover. It's basically a soft cloth seat that belts the baby in and helps them to sit in the shopping cart seat more securely without using those grody seatbelts (have you ever looked closely at them?!). This one had a cover for the handle, which was good since the child who wouldn't dare put food in his mouth thought the shopping cart handle looked yummy. I think I got it at Right Start. If I was sick I would wash my hands much more often than usual and have Ron do more of the hands on care. We also would have JH have more down time than usual during the virus season so he'd have more strength to fight anything off. (He's the type that would go and go and go until he dropped if we let him.) I would also do what you do did and turn my back to everyone in elevators, people always wanted to touch John Henry. I'd also tell them when they reached out that *he* was contagious, and they'd back off. If I said I didn't want him to get germs from them (tactfully, of course ~g~) they'd always say they weren't sick (cough, sniff). Yeah, right. At family parties during virus season we'd sit away from the crowd and not let anyone pick JH up. Luckily my family is very cool about this sort of thing. The number one thing we did to avoid RSV was avoid the doctor's office unless we really had to be there! No one should feel like they are being weird trying to prevent their preemie from getting ill. Around here many of my friends are advised by their new baby's peds to take their older siblings out of preschool for 6 - 8 weeks if the baby is born during the fall/winter. And the most fussy about getting sick by far are the most successful people I know -- they'd have a fit if someone with a cold came near them -- they can't afford to take anytime off work. At my husband's lawfirm they had a doctor come and give the flu shot to everyone who wanted it way back in the beginning of October. (I haven't been able to find one yet, luckily JH finally got his a week ago.)
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I also brought antibacterial wipes everywhere I went and wiped down everything that I might touch - for check ups follow ups for lungs and eyes etc. I also stopped making eye contact with people to avoid all the questions. We stayed in the house the entire first winter and really did not emerge until late spring.
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Now that we have our little ones home everyone wants us to come and visit and share our little ones with them. No matter how many times you try to tell them that you just can't do it because of all the germs and risks to our little ones people just can't understand. So I have come up with a perfect excuse and it always works. Before we left the hospital our little Olivia had to have a car seat test. I do not know if other NICU's do this but basically I will tell you what that means. Our little Olivia had to sit in her car seat and they would monitor her to see if her O2 levels would drop. Because she was so tiny there was a chance that she wouldn't fit in it right and it could obstruct her airway from the way she was sitting. So they tested her for the amount of time that it would take us to get home from the hospital. She passed with flying colors. BUT no one else knows this. So when I get that call from family and friends asking me to bring her over I tell them that Olivia cannot ride in the car seat for extended periods of time because it occludes her airway. And I explain the whole test and the reason being that she is so tiny that she cannot fit in the car seat correctly. So therefore we cannot take the chance of her not breathing on the way to visit. And every time they always respond, "Oh no I wouldn't want her to stop breathing, we will wait until she is bigger" So far I haven't had anyone say, well then I will come over there. I am working on an excuse for that one. Although I do not answer the phone a whole lot. I let the answering machine pick up and I screen my calls. And when I finally call back I just tell them I was in the shower and couldn't hear the phone ringing. I of course wait to call after bedtime. This was just one of my quirky ways of keeping people away from my little Olivia until after cold and flu season is over. I thought I would share this with all of you just in case you needed an excuse.
