Oh Baby it’s Cold Outside…Achoo!

Every year around this time we spend more time indoors, the heat is cranked and inevitably one of us gets sick and then “shares” it with the rest of the family. My daughter, L, has gone to daycare since she was 3.5 months old (she is now 2) and this will be our 3rd New England winter. It seems like every winter, we go through an epic number of Boogie Wipes. I’m hoping that we’ll stay relatively cough and cold-free this year now that she’s a bit older and not prone to sticking absolutely every toy in her mouth that every other kid from daycare has inevitably drooled or chewed on.

We’ve been really lucky because L has been really healthy her whole life, in fact we have only had one unscheduled doctor’s visit since she was born! In my circle of playgroup pals, I have realized how many parents have questions about how often their kids get sick and is there something that they could do nutrition-wise or environmentally to help their kids thrive. Maybe I’m just more attuned to this because in my non-mom role, I teach Nutrition courses at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University and also do Asthma Research at Children’s Hospital Boston.

To try to dispel some of the myths and misconceptions about allergies and asthma, I contacted Mama J to see if the Boston Baby Mama readers would be interested in me contributing regularly to the blog. One of the topics that Mama J was interested in hearing about was how much genetics comes into play in allergies and asthma, so I’ll be working on a post about that soon, but so that I can get other ideas, please send topics of interest my way to the email asthma@childrens.harvard.edu or please post a comment!