Baby gets his first cold.

My biggest fear when Freddie was born was him getting sick from his siblings or other people. I did my best to keep him germ free, I made his brothers thoroughly wash and sanitise their hands before touching him and I hardly, if any, let anyone hold him.

I just couldn’t imagine how we would cope with a sick baby and from what I have seen from close friends that had newborns recently, lots of the babies ended up in hospital for several days.

Well, as I suspected would happen (and I don’t know if this was a coincidence or not) I stopped breastfeeding two weeks ago (waaaaaa, it still makes me sad BTW) and this week, he caught a cold. I know where this cold came from, it came from kinder. Will spent, oh… I dunno, maybe six hours in total last week at kinder and it was enough for him to catch a cold, give it to Aston, who then gave it to Freddie. Aston spends the most time with Freddie and sits next to him in the car seat arrangement. He helps me by putting Freddie’s dummy back in if it falls out and one of those dummy insertions had a few germ ridden fingers attached to them.

Darling Freddie woke the next day with sniffles and essentially, a blocked and congested nose. It was terrible, he didn’t know what to do, and because babies breathe through their noses and not their mouth, he was gagging and was often beside himself. The hardest part was, when he cried, it made more mucus, so I quickly bought Fess, used the nose aspirator and rubbed vicks under his feet and put the humidifier on in our room.

I knew all the tricks, but it still didn’t mean I slept at night. He would not sleep flat and he wouldn’t really sleep anywhere other than my arms that first sick night, and you know what I did? I will tell you what I did, but you can’t have a go at me about it, I also don’t want you to do it because I did it and it most likely (definitely) is not SIDS safe. I put him in his bouncer to sleep, in my room next to me. Look, it isn’t that bad really, because he was waking so often anyway, but that night, he slept in his bouncer in my room so he was up right and to give him the best opportunity to rest, breathe and I don’t know, it felt like the only smart solution at the time. Trust me, I know what you are thinking… put books under the basinet or towels under his mattress! I tried all that, trust me, he just would not have a bar of it.

I ended up buying the nose tube sucker thingy, have you seen them? You put the nozzle at their nose and you suck in with your mouth from the other end, ohhhhh that thing is amazing! Sucked all the mucus out! (there is a filter to stop it going into the tube to the mouth BTW)

Today, he still isn’t 100% congestion free but thank God, he didn’t have a temp or a cough.

Oh and of course, Freddie gave me the germs too early in the week.

In other news, Freddie is completely formula fed, as you know from last week, and he is drinking more of his bottles. I stopped feeding him in the early hours of the morning and he would get into a routine himself of waking at 7am for his feed and then go four hourly during the day. However, just because he doesn’t feed at night, doesn’t mean he sleeps through the night from 7-7. He still wakes when he loses his dummy (which is often) and he needs a few resettling times.

Freddie is completely in 00 size clothing, he is almost out of his cocoona baby nest (we had to bring it back so he slept a little upright during his cold and from the day after he slept in the bouncer on day one). He also is more interactive with smiles and playing with dangling toys. He discovered his feet. He still screams in the car (mystery unsolved) and his flat head is so much better! His eyes are slowly turing brown also, this is crazy, because I was certain he would have blue eyes like Will, his brother. When Freddie was born, his eyes were the lightest blue I have ever seen but during the last few weeks, they got darker.

Routine this week:

7am Wake Feed

8:30/9am sleep (in pram because we do the kinder or school drop off)

11am Feed

12:30/1 sleep (if he doesn’t sleep properly, I always re-settle him)

3pm Feed (this is school pick up time, so I either feed him at 2:30 or 3:30 during weekdays)

4:30/5pm Nap

6pm bath

Bottle

7:15ish bed

10:30pm dreamfeed

Throughout the night- resettle him in his basinet.