Night Nurses Tips for New Parents to Stay Healthy

November 13, 2022

Our Night Nurses Tips for New Parents to Stay Healthy was updated to include COVID19 precautions and vaccine info. The tips below are ways to help prevent and lessen the severity of colds, flu and contagious illnesses. These are the real tips and research from our team!

Night Nurses Tips for New Parents to Stay Healthy

Sleep deprivation and anxiety can wreak havoc on new parents’ immune systems, especially in the winter months when we tend to stay indoors. Working with newborns, it’s imperative that our team remain illness-free, so who better to ask for wellness tips than our own nurses and night nannies?  

Here’s our team’s best advice for staying healthy as a new parent:

• Stay Hydrated: “Water, water, water!” says BJ Edmunds, NCP for over 2 years.  Keeping properly hydrated allows the body to fight infection, maintain proper digestion and remove unhealthy toxins efficiently.   Remember that coffee and sugary drinks can actually dehydrate your body. So if you have these drinks, be sure to counter the dehydrating effects with –you guessed it- more water. We like to keep one of these water bottles on hand to measure exactly how much water we’re taking in.

• Wash those Hands: We all know this one but if you’d like a reminder, this video shows exactly how long handwashing should take.

• Saline + Vaseline: You’ve probably heard that saline solution, which is simply warm water with salt dissolved in it, can be used to flush out nasal passages. This helps fight off colds and flu by taking germs out before they can get in your body. But there’s a second step that can be even more helpful.   As Joy Becker, LPN, recommends: “Use Saline in the nose daily, then apply petroleum jelly at the opening of your nostril. The saline flushes out any germs and bacteria. The petroleum jelly helps protect germs from going into your nasal passages, which can help prevent colds and sinus infections.”

• Take a sauna:  A common misconception about saunas is that they work because we’re “sweating out toxins.”  While yes, we’re sweating out dirt that’s on the surface of our skin, actual toxins are eliminated by our liver and kidneys. Recent studies show that sauna use does help keep us healthy and lessen the effects of colds and flu though! As the Mayo Clinic says, sauna use is “linked to an array of health benefits”.  Believe it or not, you can actually buy your own sauna on Amazon and install it yourself.

Night Nurses Tips for New Parents to Stay Healthy – What about Sleep?

Sleep – by any means necessary: “Sleep when the baby sleeps” sounds good in theory but often doesn’t work in practice. Almost all new moms and dads experience sleep deprivation. This leads to a chain of other problems like weakened immunity, headaches and migraines and an increase in potential accidents due to drowsiness. For parents with older children, or those with little or no parental leave, daytime naps might not be an option. Additionally, because we’re in a constant “alert state” caring for baby it can be very difficult to wind-down and sleep when the opportunity actually does present itself.

To help get the restorative sleep that helps us mentally and physically, meditation can help. One easy method is the “4-7-8” breathing technique popularized by Dr. Andrew Weil. The basics of this technique are below, but we highly encourage watching this video demonstration:

– Close your mouth and inhale quietly through your nose to a mental count of four.

– Hold your breath for a count of seven.

– Exhale completely through your mouth, making a whoosh sound to a count of eight.

Switch Nights or Hours – Another way to combat sleep deprivation is to have a schedule with your partner. Switch whole nights or blocks of time with your partner so you’re both getting uninterrupted sleep.

How Can I Minimize the Risk of Illness?

• Vitamin D AND Vitamin C!  In looking at over 82 studies, Vitamin D is the one supplement shown to protect against the common cold in all age groups. You can find vitamin d in dairy and cereals but a free way to get Vitamin D is to go out in the sun for 10-30 minutes a day.   Vitamin C is good too, but you can’t just drink a bunch of OJ at the first sign of a cold, it has to be consistent supplementation for 3-4 months to make a difference in the severity and length of a cold.  The ideal scenario is to use Vitamin C and D together all winter but if you can only 1 thing, remember good old sunshine!

• Hospital Grade Disinfectant – You probably already own Lysol disinfectant but did you know there’s a hospital grade version? It’s a little bit more expensive but is proven to kill Norovirus (the gross stomach flu) in addition to other germs and bacteria.

• Get Your Flu Shot as Early as Possible:  Receiving the flu vaccine before flu season is a pre-emptive strike against the flu. An added benefit is the protection the flu vaccine gives your infant. According to the CDC, one study showed that giving flu vaccine to pregnant women was 92% effective in preventing hospitalization of infants for flu.

• Get the COVID vaccine: To protect yourself and those too young or medically unable, please get the covid vaccine. The vaccine lessens the symptoms of covid and can prevent hospitalization. This helps you, but also helps keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. Mask up when appropriate as well.

Visit our Amazon shop for products that are proven to help minimize the effects of colds and flu.  What helps you stay healthy? Let us know on Facebook or Twitter!