Nursing Your Kids

I planned on writing a outraged piece about J Lo and her decision not to breastfeed because it would interfere with her ability to train for a marathon. The article I read had her quoted as saying things to the effect of, ‘I wasn’t breastfed and I turned out fine,’ as though that’s a good excuse for not bothering to even try to breastfeed when there’s no question that it’s the best possible for nutrition for an infant, and things like, ‘I want my children to be proud of me,’ like being an international sensation isn’t enough of a source of pride.

But since I’ve sat on it for a few days I’m not so outraged anymore. Instead I’m just sad that instead of spending time with her newborn twins she’s spending time with a personal trainer. Rather than make her kids proud by being a good mother she wants to make them proud by being in good shape.

I can’t really compare her life to mine. She is, after all, famous and her looks are worth far more than mine. But I still know what it’s like to want your body back. I was in great shape before I got pregnant with Sam and I’m sure I’ll never be in that kind of shape again. But before Sam was born I had ten or more hours a week to spend at the gym, lifting weights and practicing yoga. Perhaps when he’s older and the baby is older I’ll find that time again, but right now it’s not a priority. I still make time to exercise, and when the new baby is born in May I’ll make time to exercise again as soon as I get the okay, but for those first few months when the baby is nursing non-stop I’ll probably keep my gym membership on hold so I’m available for my baby. Those first months go by so quickly and with a spring baby I imagine I’ll get my exercise by walking to the playground every day or chasing Sam around the beach while wearing the baby in a sling or wrap.

It’s hard to struggle with body image when pregnancy so drastically changes the way you look and feel. I’m sure it’s worse when you’re paid to look fabulous. But so many other celebrities have been so public about breastfeeding that it just makes me sad that J Lo, who is such a role model, such an influence on women, seems to be telling the world that her body comes before her children.

Elizabeth Jett, mother to an exclusively breastfed infant and a five-year-old, failed to show up for jury duty in Maryland this October. She initially attempted to get out of service until the summer, but court officials denied her request offering her dates in January instead. Rather than agree to a date in January, she just didn’t show up to court and called in the morning of her service to say she wasn’t going. In January she was asked to come in to talk with the judge about her situation and found she was actually being held in contempt of court.

Breastfeeding a young infant is incredibly time consuming. Even if Jett were able to find appropriate child care she’d still need to be excused from court proceedings several times a day in order to express milk. Postponing her jury duty for a few extra months makes it more likely that she’d be able to serve well, rather than being distracted by her rock-hard boobs and the fear of squirting breastmilk all over her fellow jurors. I don’t think that it was right of her to just skip out on jury duty and I don’t think that it was wrong of the judge to hold her in contempt of court under the circumstances, but mothers of infants should be given some leeway in regards to rescheduling jury duty.

Lawmakers have proposed legislation that would allow breastfeeding mothers with young children to be excused from jury duty. This hasn’t gone over well.

Brian Frosh, Chair for the Maryland Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, said the law would cause more people to try to postpone their duties, “If you start saying, we’re gonna excuse people for breastfeeding, you’ve gotta say ok to kidney dialysis, chemotherapy and all the other maladies that afflict the human condition.”

Frosh was also quoted as saying, “I really hope we don’t have to get in the business of passing laws for every excuse you may have for jury duty,” because obviously chemo is a lousy excuse for skipping out on one’s civic duties. Did my sarcasm come across clearly enough there? Because clearly Frosh is a dick. I mean seriously, chemo isn’t a good enough excuse to be excused from jury duty? Has he ever met anyone going through chemotherapy?

Frosh’s dickheadery aside, I think that Jett screwed up big time by failing to report. The law is law. Had she responded to letters and agreed to reschedule she wouldn’t be in this position.

For those of you keeping track, things have gotten better in the sleep department. By night four of our return to sleep training Sam cried at the gate for a little over 15 minutes- after 10 we put him back into bed and he promptly climbed out and returned to crying at the gate. But after a few short minutes more he climbed back into bed and went to sleep. By night five, he only cried for about 10 minutes. He was quiet before we returned to his room. Each night after I held my breath, waiting, and each night he was in bed before we had to put him back in. Last night, his cries weren’t even cries at all. They were just sad, sweet little requests. “Dada? Dada carry. Dada. Mama. Mama, take the gate off.” He was asleep before the ten minutes were up.

He isn’t sleeping through the night every night, but he’s sleeping through most nights and he doesn’t sound as angry when he wakes. He’s been sleeping a bit later in the morning too, which is just lovely for me since I love to sleep in. I think he’s finally starting to fully catch up on sleep. The cycle of sleep deprivation is coming to an end. For now, anyway.

This type of sleep training was a last resort for us. I don’t like letting Sam cry and aside from a few sleep deprived moments of my own, when I let him cry because I was just to frustrated with the crying to deal with him, we never let him cry until he was over a year old. Even after that we tried most other methods of getting him to sleep before we’d resort to letting him cry (or self-soothe, as the “experts” call it.) But bedtime routines weren’t working, rocking wasn’t working, staying with him while he fell asleep wasn’t working and co-sleeping wasn’t working. He was sleep deprived and we were miserable. We took a chance, tried something I didn’t want to try, and so far it’s working.

Knowing Sam and his sleep cycles, I’m sure it won’t last forever and I fully expect a return to sleep hell once the new baby arrives, but until then it’s nice to have two hours in the evening when we’re not arguing with a toddler about bedtime and we can finally watch the Netflix movies that have been collecting dust on our shelves.

Want to hear about my spectacularly bad birthday? We were our way to the zoo Saturday morning, with Bob’s cousins and cousin’s children following us in their car. I was driving. I merged onto the highway and a car a few cars ahead of us was scared to merge and stopped. The next car in line stopped, I stopped, but Bob’s cousin didn’t. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw he was still moving so I was prepared for the impact and I was relieved that it didn’t cause us to hit the car in front of us.

Sam in the back seat was fine, Bob and I were fine, the cousin and family were fine, but the cars? Not so much. Their small SUV smashed in our bumper pretty good. The trunk won’t latch, the taillights are busted, the license plate is pushed under the car, the license plate light is dangling and there’s other damage I can’t think of right now. Their car fared a bit better, but the front was smashed and was leaking antifreeze so it wasn’t safe to drive either.

We went directly to an auto body shop (where the cars are still waiting to be inspected by Bob’s cousin’s insurance.) We made some phone calls, rented some cars at the rental place next door, and about an hour later we stopped back at the house so I could pick up a book and my laptop. Bob drove me to the hospital where I reported to Labor and Delivery. They strapped me to contraction monitors to make sure the baby was okay and I wasn’t going into premature labor. I had to stay there for four hours which ended up being closer to five since the resident on duty didn’t put the time into the system until he saw me, about half an hour after I arrived and twenty minutes after I’d been hooked up.

Awesome. My car was smashed, its value to us is way more than its value to the insurance company which means they may or may not fix it rather than total it, and I spent four hours hooked up to contraction monitors on my 30th birthday. Let’s hope that’s not an omen for the year to come.

It pains me to think about sleep training, let alone be in the house when it happens, but the truth is that even though he cried for two hours the first night and one hour the second night, Sam slept straight through both nights without waking. This morning I woke up before he did.

About an hour after we left his room last night, Sam decided that he’d had enough, got into bed and went to sleep. He didn’t cry the entire hour and he didn’t cry nearly as much as he did the first night. He stood at the gate in his doorway for a while and talked about Thomas and Percy and James. Every ten minutes Bob went in, put him back in bed and left. Sam protested when he left, but didn’t scream like he did the night before. He cried mostly while he demanded that we take the gate off.

I don’t know what tonight will be like. We had a pretty good day, the three of us. We bummed around the house most of the morning then went to the post office. Bob went for a haircut and Sam and I went to play with the train table at Barnes and Noble for a while. Sam napped and Bob and I worked around the house. After Sam’s nap we worked for a bit longer while Sam played then the three of us went out to celebrate our wedding anniversary at a local restaurant that features a kids meal happy hour. Sam surprised me by eating just about everything on the table, from onion rings to my Thai turkey salad, even asking for lettuce.

Back at home we watched a bit of Thomas, played with toys, then got ready for bed. Sam and I brushed off the food from his teeth, picked out the color diaper he wanted to wear and the pajamas. Now, just 5 minutes after Bob left his room, he’s at his gate demanding to take the blue diaper and the red pajamas off and replace them with the green diaper and the blue pajamas. I am very tired and hopeful he’ll go to sleep more easily tonight.

Life was so much easier when he would just nurse to sleep.

A few months ago, before he got sick for the first time this winter, Sam was going to sleep. We’d read a few stories, kiss him good night and leave the room. It took about a week of putting him back to bed each time he’d get and standing in the hall until he was asleep, but it worked. 6 out of 7 nights he’d go to sleep on his own. Some nights he requested more kisses. Other nights he’d ask me to lay down with him and I would for a minute or two. Then I’d get up, kiss him again and leave the room.

But then he got sick and started getting the last of his 2 year molars at the same time. He was up coughing, couldn’t breathe through the congestion and his teeth hurt. A few nights in a row he slept with us and then we moved him back to his own bed when he was feeling better. Only he wouldn’t go to sleep anymore and he wouldn’t stay asleep We’d try to leave and he’d start to cry out for us to stay. His requests for more kisses turned into angry demands. He’d tell us where to put our heads on the pillow and which side of his bed to lie down on. When he woke in the night he’d demand either mama or dada and the other parent just wouldn’t do. His screams of anger and outrage would keep us both up if the wrong person came in to put him back to bed. He became a nasty little dictator.

We went back to trying to sleep train. I say we but I mean Bob. I just don’t have it in me, especially since I’m pregnant. We started a week ago and what worked the last time, putting him back in bed each time he got out no longer works. He gave himself a black eye banging his head on his many exhausted trips in and out of bed. Bob started sitting in the room with him until he fell asleep. That process takes hours. Each time Bob got up to leave Sam would wake up, furious.

At his two year well visit we asked our pediatrician what she thought. She says he’s manipulating us and we need to start putting him to bed and letting him scream, leaving completely and coming back every 10 minutes to put him back in bed. She suggested putting a sleeping bag on the floor so he won’t bump his head getting in and out of bed.

My inclination is to just give in and go to sleep with him to avoid the hours of screaming. But Bob agrees with the pediatrician. So sleep training it is. Last night, after two hours of screaming at the gate he fell asleep on the sleeping bag on the floor. He was still sniffling and crying a little in his sleep. It kills me. We’re just going to have to do this again when the baby comes and he stops sleeping all over again. It’s been just over an hour and he’s quiet. I wonder if he’ll stay that way.

I apologize for the super-lame post but we’re sleep training and I can’t think straight

March is a busy month in this household. What’s usually one of the two bleakest months of the year in Philadelphia is now filled with events. Sam’s birthday is the 8th, our wedding anniversary is the 19th and my 30th birthday is this Saturday, the 22nd.

We don’t have anything planned for our anniversary. Again. It’s only our anniversary though we’ve been together for close to eight years) and we’ve pretty much slacked celebrating it. Last year we were at a funeral on our anniversary and though my in-laws were kind enough to watch Sam for an hour after a four hour drive back to the city a funeral really isn’t my idea of anniversary fun. This year I’m pregnant, our anniversary falls on a Wednesday and we don’t have a babysitter. I don’t foresee anything especially thrilling.

Easter is early this year so my birthday falls on the day of Bob’s family’s annual day before Easter party which means I’ll celebrate my birthday with Easter egg hunts, Easter Pie and a ton of small children. It’s not the celebration I had in mind when I originally envisioned a 30th birthday party. My vision was more of an adult party, something that involved copious amounts of alcohol. People ask me if turning 30 bothers me, if I feel like I’m getting old. The short answer is no. Like many people who are content with their lives, the older I get the older my concept of old gets. I just wish that I could enjoy several rounds of cocktails with my friends.

This afternoon on our way to a favorite restaurant we stopped at the playground to find a missing sneaker. Sneaker found, we let Sam loose to play for a few minutes and I chatted with a friend, another pregnant woman with a daughter Sam’s age.

The restaurant we were heading to happens to be our favorite happy hour spot. When Sam was an infant we’d stop there every Friday afternoon for margaritas. I lamented the fact that I am currently unable to enjoy a margarita. Bob asked how long it would be until my friend could drink again- essentially asking her due date. My friend mentioned that even after delivery you can’t drink while you’re nursing. I told her that that’s not totally true. You can drink, you just can’t get wasted.

She looked guilty for a minute then told me that after abstaining for a while she went out with a group of moms who were medical professionals. They asked why she wasn’t drinking. She told them it was because she was nursing and they laughed and explained that it was fine. A glass of wine or a single cocktail enjoyed at the right time isn’t going to affect your baby. Moderation is key and Kellymom has a list of guidelines for responsible drinking while nursing.

The conversation was timely since I just saw this article:

Breastfeeding moms can drink moderately

Stockholm - Breastfeeding women can drink moderate amounts of alcohol without endangering their baby, Sweden’s National Food Administration said on Tuesday, changing its previous recommendation to abstain entirely.

The agency, which aims to monitor food quality sold and produced in Sweden, stressed its intention was not to encourage women to drink while breastfeeding and strongly advised women to continue to abstain from alcohol while pregnant.

2.30 am.
I’m jolted awake by the sound of Sam screaming, “Dada! Dada!” Since Bob got up with him for the previous night’s wakeup I drag myself out of bed to get him figuring a trip to the bathroom wouldn’t hurt and this is as good of an excuse as any.

Sam, standing at the gate trying to close the door behind him, is not happy to see me and screams, “No, mama! Mama, go! Mama back in bed. Mama back in bed. Dada! Dada! Dada!” I walk past him and go to the bathroom. I hear Bob get up. On my way back to bed I hear Sam still complaining about something. I get back into bed. Sam and Bob are still talking then it’s quiet. I fall back to sleep.

3.30 am
I’m jolted awake by the sound of Sam screaming, “Dada! Dada!” I look over and see that Bob’s not back in bed which means that Sam probably woke when Bob was trying to leave his room. I drag myself out of bed to get him figuring a trip to the bathroom wouldn’t hurt and this is as good of an excuse as any. Bob’s beaten me to the bathroom so I stop at Sam’s door to tell him to get back into bed. He’s dropped his Thomas train over the gate. He tells me to get back into bed, to go and that he wants dada. I tell him to get back into bed if he wants Thomas back. He yells, “Mama go!” so I continue down the hallway and meet Bob coming out of the bathroom.

On my way back to bed I look in and see that Sam and Bob are in Sam’s bed. Bob’s trying to go back to sleep and Sam’s sitting up, complaining. I walk over the gate and give Sam his Thomas train back. He cries, “Mama, stay! Mama lie down.” So I tell Bob I’ve got it and he gets out of bed and I climb in. Sam’s quiet for a moment and hands me his Spencer train. “Mama hold it.” I take it.

We both lay in bed, clutching our respective trains then there’s a noise from my bedroom. Sam bolts upright and yells, “Mama go. Mama out of bed. Dada!” He starts to push me and pull the covers off of me. I say, “Alright, alright,” and I sit up at the foot of his bed. He tells me to go a few more times but I ignore him. He’s tired and looks like he’ll fall back to sleep. He murmurs for me to take the gate off a few times. After 10 minutes or so I stand up and cover him. He sits up and tells me to lie down. I’m tired, so I do. I fall asleep scrunched in the small space of twin bed he’s allowed me.

4.54 am
I wake and realize I should try to sneak out of bed. I look over and Sam knows exactly what I’m trying to do. He’s got one eye open. I lay back down. His eye closes. I sit up. It opens. I realize I’m dreaming and that Sam’s sound asleep. I get up and go back to my own bed.

Yet another celebrity is saying that breastfeeding helped her lose the baby weight. Christina Aguilera, who had her first postpartum interview on the Ellen show (you can watch the interview, which is awfully cute, here) sporting an enormous rack and teeny tiny waist told Access Hollywood:

I think they say that when you’re breastfeeding, you know, your weight kind of slims down. It’s a little easier. It’s like a workout within itself. It’s very tiring actually and you find yourself snacking more often.

As much as I find it difficult to believe that breastfeeding is doing all of the work for her, I agree with Monica’s comment yesterday about celebrities who talk about breastfeeding. Monica wrote:

I still like it when celebrities speak about breastfeeding at all just to spread the word. Personally if someone’s breastfeeding for the “wrong” reasons, whether for losing weight or celebrity worship, I don’t really care. It’s still better than if they never tried it at all!

I’m with you Monica. I just wish I had a team to whip me into shape when breastfeeding doesn’t magically make my baby weight disappear.

Here’s a list of some other celebrities who have openly talked about breastfeeding in the past year or so.

Naomi Watts
Nicole Ritchie
Julia Roberts
Jennifer Garner
Helena Bonham Carter
Salma Hayek
Maggie Gyllenhaal

A quick google search turned up this outdated “updated” list from Breastfeeding.com

Tori Amos
Erykah Badu
Cindy Crawford
Elle McPherson
Jerry Hall
Faith Hill
Jodie Foster
Karenna Gore-Schiff
Catherine Zeta-Jones

Lucy Lawless (pictured in an ad for World Breastfeeding Week) proudly breastfed her baby.

Some celebrities who were breastfed include:
Manny Ramirez (from the Red Sox)
Pelé (who they say was breastfed for 5 years!)
The Hansons (of Mmmm Bop fame)

When I got pregnant with Sam I was in great shape. I’d been working out 4 or 5 times a week for years, I did yoga a few times a week, and walked all over the city. I was tight, toned, and slightly underweight. By the time I had my first doctor’s visit when I was 8 or 9 weeks pregnant I’d already gained 8 pounds. It never stopped. I kept gaining and gaining despite the fact that I was still working out 4 or 5 times a 50 week and doing yoga. I stopped looking at the scale when I hit 50 pounds gained a month or two before my due date.

Everyone told me I’d have no trouble losing the weight, especially because I was breastfeeding. I heard all sorts of rumors that breastfeeding helps with weight loss. I heard about women who dropped weight without trying and kept losing weight until they were below their pre-pregnancy weight. I heard about women who kept the weight on and lost it all at once when they stopped nursing. I struggled and struggled to lose the weight after Sam was born. When he was six months old I still couldn’t fit into all of my pre-baby pants. By 9 months postpartum I was able to wear most of my old clothes. With the help of two nasty stomach bugs I was back to pre-pregnancy weight by Sam’s first birthday. By the time he was 18 months old I’d gained 8 of those pounds back.

Maybe I would have lost the weight again when he stopped nursing, but I got pregnant again before I had the chance to find out.

So when I hear about people who credit breastfeeding with rapid weight loss I get a little bit bitter. Screw you, Naomi Watts. I’m sure your personal trainer had more to do with your fabulous shape than breastfeeding.

Actress Naomi Watts has said the pressures of motherhood are the reason for her slim post-pregnancy figure.

She said: “Breastfeeding - that’s how you drop weight. Even though you are just eating all the time, he is eating too”.

At least she’s honest about the sleep thing.

She adds: “My son is a true joy, but motherhood is harder than I thought. The biggest surprise was the lack of sleep. He is still struggling to sleep through the night”.

Sam’s second birthday is tomorrow and we’re throwing him a small party to celebrate. I’m not an indulgent parent. Sure, I’ll let him eat pretzels for breakfast, but when it comes to an event he’s not going to remember I’m not the type of person rent out an establishment or provide pony rides, clowns, Elmo or an ice sculpture. We went all out for his first birthday and invited all of our family and friends, but that was more of a milestone for us. We made it through a year. At this point, a year later, we’re glad to celebrate Sam’s second year of life outside the womb and look forward to his third, but at seven months pregnant I don’t feel like feeding fifty people again. So a small party it is.

Of course Bob’s family is big and close so small is relative. His generous aunts send cards and call when Sam’s sick so it would feel wrong not to invite them. And if we’re inviting his aunts and uncles it would be weird not to invite his cousins, who may or may not come anyway. Right now small looks like it’s going to be about twenty people. Maybe a few more, maybe a few less. We scheduled the party for four o’clock in the afternoon which is kind of an odd time for a party on a Sunday afternoon, but any earlier, say a normal two o’clock in the afternoon party, would probably interfere with naptime.

I’ve spent the last several days trying to clean parts of the house that haven’t been cleaned much and today while Sam naps I’m baking his birthday cake which I’ll freeze overnight and frost tomorrow. Rumor has it that frosting is much easier when a cake is frozen.

And now I’m going to tell you a secret that I may or may not share on the food blog. As I went to put the cake in the oven I realized the oven rack was set too low. I turned to put the cake pan on the island behind me, turned back to adjust the rack, and splat! The cake pan fell upside down on the swept, but certainly not clean floor. I froze for a moment, then scraped it back into the pan, tapped the side a few times to release any air bubbles, put it carefully on the island, adjusted the oven rack, and put it in the oven. I may pretend that it never happened. I may not. Time will tell.

My son is driving me crazy. He is whiny and clingy and demanding and rude. He yells at me constantly to assert himself and throws things when his demands aren’t met. These are not behaviors he sees demonstrated on a regular basis so I can only hope that this is a stage.

I hope this stage is short-lived.

Every 15 minutes or so I find myself reminding him that he needs to speak nicely. He’ll immediately lower his voice to a regular speaking tone and say please, then go right back to yelling and demanding. If I give him a blue fork he’ll scream, “Noooooooo! Green fork!” Offering choices makes things worse. If I offer him the green fork or the blue fork he’ll say green then scream, “Nooooooo! Orange fork!” when the fork arrives.

Bedtime battles have returned. Our formerly 15-20 minute bedtime routine is now back to a full hour and a half. The last month of illness has left him unable to settle himself. I don’t object to staying with him until he falls asleep since I know he’s just not feeling well and his better habits will eventually return, but at seven months pregnant I’m just not that delicate anymore and getting out of bed wakes him every time. When he wakes he’s angry, demanding that I lay down on this particular spot on the pillow, then another spot on the pillow. He screams, “More kisses! More, more, more!” and it would be charming if he weren’t so damn angry about it, flailing his arms like a little dictator.

He wants me to carry him constantly, only wanting to walk when it’s unsafe or inconvenient. He no longer sits in a chair by himself for meals, he needs to sit on, “Mama’s lap!!” I can’t just cuddle him when trying to help him fall asleep, he insists on sleeping, “On top of mama, “ a demand I’m currently unwilling to meet.

He’s truly making me nuts. I’m sort of looking forward to a lumpy, blobby newborn who does little but nurse, sleep and poop all day long.

One of the things I’ve been considering for baby number two is an Arm’s Reach Co-Sleeper. When Sam was born he slept in the bassinet attachment of a pack n play next to our bed (when he wasn’t actually sleeping in our bed) for the first four or five months of his life and it was fine. But one of my complaints about the pack n play was that it wasn’t level with the bed so I had to lift him in and out of it every time he needed to nurse. That is probably why he spent so much time actually sleeping in our bed.

The Arm’s Reach Co-Sleeper looks as though it solves that problem. With the leg attachments we could make it level with our mattress, eliminating my need to stoop or bend, but looking more closely at the actual product I wonder if it makes sense at all. It looks like the fourth wall, the side that butts up against the bed, doesn’t go down completely. Based on the images from the site it seems like there’s still a partial wall which means I wouldn’t be able to just slide over and nurse, I’d still have to lift the baby from the co-sleeper and return the baby to the co-sleeper.

If that’s the case, what’s the point? Aside from being slightly more level than a pack n play what are the advantages, if any of using an actual co-sleeper? Unfortunately our crib doesn’t have a drop side. If it did, we’d be able to sidecar the crib, completely eliminating any barricade between me and baby, an idea which seems to make more sense.

Does anyone have any experience with the Arms Reach Co-Sleeper or a crib side-car that you can share?

I saw a question on a message board where a mother with the flu asked if it was still safe to nurse her child, fearing that she’d pass on whatever illness she had to him.

Last winter, when Sam was still nursing regularly, I became ill with a stomach virus on two separate occasions. The first time I got it first and he didn’t get sick at all. At the time I attributed it to him receiving my anti-bodies through my breastmilk. I figured he was better able to fight the virus because he was nursing full time. The second time I got a virus he got it first and passed it to me. I definitely got the worst of it. He woke up in the middle of the night vomiting. He vomited three or four times then he was done. I wasn’t so lucky. I was ill for days starting the morning after he was sick, but he stayed well hydrated and calm because he was able to nurse. Again, I felt that he benefited from the breastmilk. If he’d been on formula he may not have fared so well.

Here’s what Kellymom has to say:

The best thing you can do for your baby when you’re sick is to continue to breastfeed. When you have a contagious illness such as a cold, flu, or other mild virus, your baby was exposed to the illness before you even knew you were sick. Your milk will not transmit your illness to baby, but it does have antibodies in it that are specific to your illness (plus anything else you or baby have been exposed to) - they’ll help prevent baby from getting sick, or if he does get sick, he’ll probably not be as sick as you.

You can also take measures to prevent baby from getting sick by doing the usual things to prevent the spread of illness: washing hands often, avoid sneezing/coughing on baby, limiting face-to-face contact, etc .