Baby’s first cold

By Published On: December 22nd, 2014

She’s 5 months old, and our busy baby girl is celebrating […]

FullSizeRenderShe’s 5 months old, and our busy baby girl is celebrating with her very first honest to goodness cold. She’s sporting a snotty little button nose and rosy cheeks with a hacking cough, but she’s still all smiles. It’s breaking my heart.
I’m trying to look at the bright side. It’s just a cold, and she hasn’t popped a fever. She’s still cheerful, mostly. She’s strong and healthy and 5 months old. But I’m her mama, and her cough sounds awful and she’s so stuffy that she can’t sleep peacefully for long. And she’s 5 months old. Did I already say that?
So we’re running hot showers and standing in the steamy room to let her nose run. We’re wedging that little snot sucker up there and trying to clear out whatever we can reach. I’m wearing her as much as I can in my tried-and-true baby carrier, so she can sleep upright. At night, we’re propped up her mattress a bit so she’s not completely flat, hoping gravity will keep her from getting totally stuffed up. I’m ready with the baby Tylenol if she starts getting cranky, but otherwise, we just have to ride this one out.
Our older daughter used to get croup, and we had a handful of frantic midnight runs to the emergency room (including, memorably, one to a children’s hospital in Anaheim during a family trip to Disneyland—good times, right?) for nebulizers and steroids. So I’m listening for that telltale bark when our baby coughs, but so far, so good.
With three older siblings—two of whom are in school, where they’re surrounded by germy kids who probably never wash their hands and don’t think twice about coughing and sneezing all over their classmates—this was going to happen sooner or later. But here’s the thing. I can’t even blame this on school. Four days ago, I noticed the telltale signs of an impending sore throat. Twelve hours later, I was so miserable I thought I was coming down with strep or bronchitis or something big and bad and far more ominous-sounding than the common cold. But nope, just a cold, and now my baby girl has her first cold and yep, this one is all on me.
Poor baby.