Are you looking for Easy Ways to Keep Bacteria Away from Your Baby? Then look no further! These 3 tips will help you keep baby safe!
As soon as you become a parent, it’s like you put on a pair of magnifying glasses. You see germs everywhere! Every shopping cart, person, and item in your house is covered in microorganisms to get your baby. You’d probably like to put your baby in a bubble, so they don’t get sick from any germs, but you can’t do that.
So what can you do?
3 Easy Ways to Keep Bacteria Away from Your Baby
You’ve likely heard the basic ways to prevent your baby from getting sick: keep them away from sick people, avoid crowded areas, and make sure people wash their hands before touching your baby. But what else should you be doing to keep bacteria away?
1. Keep everything clean.
Sanitize, sterilize, disinfect, clean – whatever you call it, you need to be doing it to everything your baby touches, and more often than you may think. Wash new pacifiers and bottles in warm, soapy water before your baby first uses them, and again whenever they get dirty. If toys fall on the floor in a public place or your dog licks them, wash them before giving them back to your baby.
Another thing to think about is laundry. Wash your baby’s clothes separately from the rest of your family. Babies have sensitive skin, and other people’s clothes, especially underwear, may contain contaminants that could irritate your baby’s skin. It’s also a good idea to regularly run an empty cycle with a washing machine cleaner to kill any bacteria and smells that can build up in your washing machine over time.
2. Be careful about feeding.
If your baby takes formula, have your water tested for chemicals or minerals, especially if you use well water, to ensure the water is safe for your baby to drink. You also never want to leave prepared formula unrefrigerated for longer than one hour. Freshly-pumped or hand-expressed breastmilk, though, can sit out at room temperature for up to four hours and up to four days in the refrigerator, according to the CDC.
Whether bottle-feeding your baby breastmilk or formula, only fill the bottle with as much as you think your baby will drink during that feeding. If there’s any leftover, it’s best to dump it out. Bacteria from your baby’s saliva can get into the nipple or bottle.
This also applies to baby food. A used baby spoon can contain bacteria, so rather than feeding your baby from a jar of food, spoon out what they’ll eat into a bowl. Throw away whatever your baby doesn’t eat, and then put the uneaten portion in the jar into the refrigerator.
3. Use a shopping cart cover.
Going to the store with a baby can be hard for some parents. You never know who’s sick or how many dirty hands have touched the shopping cart you’re using. But sometimes you have no choice but to take your baby shopping with you. Wiping down the cart with a disinfectant wipe helps, but it doesn’t kill all the bacteria lurking on the cart.
A shopping cart cover completely covers the handle and seat and provides a 360-degree germ barrier for you and your baby. Some even double as a high chair cover, so if you regularly shop and eat out with your baby, then a shopping cart cover is a sanitary and sanity-saving purchase.
Keeping Bacteria Away from Your Baby
What other ways do you keep bacteria away from your baby? Let us know in the comments below and make sure to check out more great tips in our parenting section.
