Flu Season is Coming: Beware the Bugs!

The good thing about becoming a mother to an infant is that you get to grow into each illness together. Every bug that comes home with your child has about a 90% chance of infecting you as well. You might recall I wrote about the “fun” daycare bugs.

I know what you’re thinking, doesn’t sound like fun to me Liv. Are you crazy?

Stay with me though. Each and every bug that comes home helps to build your child’s immunity which means in the long run, they don’t get as sick as often. And as a result, neither do you.

But, if you suddenly become the parent of an older child, you don’t have that opportunity to grow through the illnesses with the child. Which means you don’t have immunity.

When Hubs and I first got together, we took our time together slow. Although we quickly figured out that our relationship was solid, I wanted proceed carefully with the children. I introduced him into our lives over a couple of months, starting with a visit with his dogs in the park, and building up to a weekend at his house a few hours away. And the very next weekend, I had the car accident. And everything changed. Suddenly, I needed help with everything. I couldn’t get up and down stairs easily. I needed to be driven and transported to and from multiple weekly specialist appointments. I couldn’t drop off or pick up the kids from day care. So, to fill in the blanks, Hubs moved in. Right smack dab in the middle of flu season.

Within about a week of moving in, all four of us got a case of the flu. We’d all had our flu shots, and the kids and I recovered fairly quickly. But poor Hubs hadn’t been exposed to the kid bugs before. I think there were a few days he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to make it through (I would posit it was a “man flu”, but I did feel sorry for him). After a week in bed, he returned to work, but it took a good two or three weeks before he felt like himself again.

[tweetthis]Have you got YOUR #flushot yet?[/tweetthis]

Since then of course, Hubs has been building his immunity. And thank goodness we haven’t had another winter like the winter of ’11. But I put most of the credit with our annual flu shot. And today, I wrote about how important it is for you to get your flu shot over on UrbanMommies. Pop over and have a look!

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6 Comments

  1. OMG. I can totally believe this. When I was a classroom teacher, every fall when I had a class of first-year students (or every time I switched to a new school), I’d get a cold that (knowing me) would inevitably turn into a sinus infection and drag on for a month. Sometimes several of these over the course of a semester. Likewise, the first-years would always get sick for about half the fall term. This is so real! Glad you’ve all acclimated to each other’s germs by now!

  2. Completely agree, the risk of flu is high in this season. We need to take care a lot.

  3. That’s so interesting. You know we are a blended family, so when we all became a family of seven, I bet the germs were hard on my parents who had new kids suddenly. We were mostly all school age.
    I did notice that for the first few years of parenting, I got some nasty viruses. I get them less often now, and I guess it’s because we are all building immune systems together?
    And yes, got my flu shot. All of us have.

    1. Author

      Yes – that is interesting, but it does make sense that the seven of you would build each other’s immunity as well. So a double gift. 😉

  4. OMG, in it right now. Actually, I’m getting over my cold much quicker than my hubs is. I told him it’s because I’m tougher. Hopefully that won’t come back to bite me. A flu shot is good advice, Liv. I’m not brave enough. Hate needles. My beau and his son got the flu shots a couple of years back and they still got sick…but it’s recommended for certain age groups.

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