Preventing a cold in the baby
A prophylaxis is often not possible and usually not useful, since various colds are part of the normal maturation process of a child. If you still want to take care of your baby, for example when he or she has just overcome an infection, there are helpful behavioral tips that all help to reduce the child’s contact with potential pathogens. First and foremost here is your own hygiene.
Washing your hands regularly and thoroughly reduces the chance of transmitting pathogens that are on your own hands to your child. Toys and other objects that the child likes to put in his or her mouth often can be washed or even disinfected regularly. Prevention is often more difficult with existing siblings.
If these children attend daycare centers, kindergartens or schools, they are in most cases the carrier of an infection. Cold viruses are transmitted particularly easily by sneezing or coughing. Here it is important not to bring sick siblings into contact with the baby as much as possible or at least not to cough on them and above all to pay attention to your own hygiene between contacts with the individual children and to wash your hands after each contact.
From a medical point of view it is not known that breastfeeding leads to an increased transmission of colds to the baby. In fact, breastfeeding offers the advantage that maternally formed antibodies directed against the causative virus can already be transmitted to the child and thus the child has a better defence against the disease-causing viruses. Cold viruses are mainly transmitted by droplets.
The nursing mother should therefore pay particular attention to adequate hygiene to avoid infecting the baby. In concrete terms, this means washing the hands thoroughly after coughing or sneezing and cleaning objects touched with dirty hands, as the viruses can also survive for several hours in the normal environment or on various surfaces. If the mother wants to ensure special protection during breastfeeding, the nipples can be sprayed with a hand disinfectant before starting breastfeeding and then wiped clean.
The most important measure is to ensure sufficient hygiene yourself. Regular and extensive hand washing as well as keeping as much distance as possible from the child when coughing or sneezing are affordable measures for parents. However, viral colds are completely normal in babies and toddlers and basically cannot be prevented, no matter how hard the sick parents try.
The child’s immune system is not yet fully developed and therefore has not much to offer against the disease. Most viral cold pathogens are completely harmless to the child. There are childhood vaccinations against potentially dangerous disease viruses, such as the whooping cough pathogen, which can/should be used to prevent a dangerous course of the disease. If sick adults – after holding hands while coughing – touch a surface that can also be touched by their baby, a disinfectant can be used to prevent virus colonization of the surface.
