To want actual hard facts: is it good for babies to get colds?

[tak1ngchances]

My DM has been on & on at me to expose my baby (6 months old) to colds and other things "to build up her immune system".

Is this bollocks? I need actual facts here, not hypotheses or anecdata.

Try googling Ben Goldacre - his take on medicine and health is usually based on fact without the usual hyperbole ...

Your mum is wrong. She has already had a cold recently, so you clearly aren't keeping her in a sterile bubble. It's perfectly reasonable to keep a relatively young baby away from yet another cold shortly after being ill.

I have just tweeted Dr Christian from Embarrassing Bodies to ask him.
Doubt he'll respond but let's ses

*see

Yes exposing baby to 'germs' ie not being super clean, not being overly pfb, letting them eat dog food, is going to help build up their immune system. Under the same theory when they have been exposed to a viral or bacterial illness it kicks off the immune system, in the case of a lot of these illnesses it will 'build up' the immune system. By build up I mean your baby will build an immunity and when exposed again they won't get the illness or won't get a bad dose. In the case of the cold and flu viruses, they mutate quickly so the cold your baby had last week can be different to the one they will be exposed to next week and henceforth will be sick again. So the very long answer to your question is, it won't harm (a healthy) baby to catch a cold, but on the other hand I would not expose a baby to a cold on purpose. Hth

I would never deliberately expose DF to a cold with the hope she'll catch them to boost her immune system, but I never actively avoid exposure to them either. There's no point. Although she's got a rotten one at the moment (still awake and screaming, DH currently trying to settle her) and I'm starting to think im going to keep her in a sterile bubble until she's 18, I'm exhausted and can't take any more

YOU are the mummy op, not your own mum. Mine had a terrible time when I had my first DC. She tried micromanaging every tiny detail. She meant well but I was 37 ffs and quite capable.

Your mum needs to back off, its your decision and you don't need to come up with cold, hard facts every time you disagree with something she wants you to do.

My mil used to constantly throw that line at me. I think it was possibly due to fact I used to avoid her when she had a cold. And boy did she get a lot of colds. She used to tell me they would never build up immunity to them if I did not expose them to colds. I asked how that was working out for her. She went a bit cats bum face and that was the last we heard of that one.

Apart from the fact they have the potential to turn nasty in young babies, it makes them bloody miserable - why would anyone want to inflict that on them?? I avoided them when mine were tiny, they encountered enough at play group etc. They are old now (10) and are fairly hardy with fully functioning immune systems - and that's despite avoiding all the misery mil wanted to share. They'll encounter enough without going looking for it!

Being as it is very difficult to tell the difference between the typical cold virus and RSV when it presents in adults, and that RSV can cause Bronchiolitis in babies, then I'd keep young babies away from anyone with an infection.
Of course you can't live in a bubble, but your mother is daft to suggest unnecessary exposure.

Only official data I have is that tending a poorly baby sucks. It's so much harder when they're babies because you can't ask/explain/soothe with words, they can't tell you where it hurts, you can't teach them to blow their noses, you can't really medicate them if they get really super-poorly, and from past experience of my two boys, they don't sleep when they're full of cold unless they're on your chest being held.

Why anyone would want to deliberately do that to them is beyond me. My two are proper little gremlins, outdoors a vast amount and I'm in no way precious about a bit of dirt. But at 6 months? I doubt you'll find data backing up your DM.

I'm another one who's had a horrendous experience of RSV and bronchiolitis. I am ultra paranoid about colds and babies. I have a friend's baby whi I've yet to meet, but won't until I'm 100% sure we are germ free.

more than a cold

I've looked after many babies with Bronchiolitis in hospital. Poor little mites really struggle sometimes. Is your mother a Spartan?

Yes my housemate at uni did forensic biology and told me this while pregnant. It is really true being exposed to bacteria and viruses builds immunity to them.

I would never deliberately expose my child to ANY illness, be it a cold, stomach bug, chicken pox or whatever. If she's going to catch something, she'll catch something (her first two terms at preschool have taught me that!) but I'm never going to actively seek illnesses out.

Exposure to a virus strengthens the immune system to that particular strain of virus/bacteria/etc. During the immune system's primary response, memory T and B lymphocytes are created. These enable the a faster and more acute response to subsequent exposures. But it's to that particular strain only. Your DC could get every cold in circulation one year and be no better protected against a flu virus the next.

The best thing you can do really is to both continue with normal life (as exposure to these things won't necessarily make them feel ill but will likely trigger the primary response) and to make sure their diets contain enough zinc and selenium.

I am looking forward to seeing if anyone actually has any papers they can link to about this etc - I have been having related thoughts about breastmilk.
Although 1001 people are queuing up to encouragingly tell me that if there are colds around, the best thing to do is fill the baby with super magic breastmilk which will provide immunity to all diseases....surely 1) if I have a cold then I'm actually transferring the virus directly and unavoidably to the baby via the milk and 2) if the milk could actually protect all against the common cold I should be sending it off to Pfizer so that someone can win the next Nobel Prize for Medicine by synthesising it into tablet form, rather than feeding it to the baby?

Noone can do research on this - it would be unethical/impossible to raise a hoarde of identical twins exactly the same, but expose one to cold germ repeatedly and the other not. Then track their entire lives to see if this difference in childhood germs has scarred them emotionally "built their immune system".

So all you are left with is anecdotes and personal feelings. Personally, I wouldn't want my child sick on purpose, plenty happens by accident to build their immune system without willingly making them sick (and my life harder).

Best there's one particular class of antibody in breast milk (I think it's IgM but can't be bothered looking through my notes). But for antibodies to a particular strain of a virus to be in a person's breast milk, their own body must already have gone through the primary immune response. If neither mother nor baby has ever been exposed to a particular strain of a particular cold, breast milk provides no passive immunity against it.