2 month baby licked mittens from the floor

[Concernedkay]

My babies mittens fell on the tiled floor while I was cutting his nails. I picked them up and took new mittens out and carried on cutting his nails. Aa little later he ended up scratching himself, a lot was going on at the time and when I rushed to put mittens on him again I realised after it was the ones that dropped on the floor. He had already put them in his mouth. Can he get ill?

I'm really strict about sterilising as he's only 2 months and immune system is not developed. The floor is clean but my husband had walked in with his shoes on earlier before I told him off. So one pair of shoes may have walked where the mittens were. I feel awful and nervous 😩

If he wasn’t your eldest he’d very likely be around a snotty toddler who might try to put their fingers in his mouth just to see what happens. Please try not to worry…unless there’s an underlying condition babies are pretty robust.

You really need to relax. Your baby will be ok x

You're not doing him in favours by sterilising everything in sight (other than bottles etc). They need the germs and bugs to develop their immune systems. It's probably done him the world of good.

He’ll be fine, babies do need exposure to germs in order to build an immune system. If you are always so anxious about very minor things I would maybe speak with your hv or GP.

Literally absolutely fine. Another few months they’ll be licking soil x

He’ll be totally fine. In a couple years he’ll be a study toddler covering his baby brother’s newborn face in snot and foraged spider legs, and that baby will be fine too. They are tough little things.

He’ll be absolutely fine. Don’t over sterilise your house it’ll have the opposite affect - we need to interact with microbes in our environment to develop good microbiomes

He'll be fine. This is exactly what his immune system needs.

Thank you everyone. And yes I do have health anxiety it's pretty obvious. It's just my husband has been to the hospital today and out and about the high street. When I read up on germs from the floor mrsa, E. coli and all sorts come up.

Stop reading up on germs

I've mentioned this on here before but DS ate a scab off of a hospital waiting room floor when he was about 7 months old.

It was gross but he was just fine. Your baby will be just fine too.

Germs are good for your baby. By sterilising everything unnecessary you are compromising your baby’s future health because they’re not getting the chance to build an immune system.

Also, baby doesn’t need mittens and they develop quicker with free hands.

I have a 4 month old. He just threw is dummy on the floor and my eldest just picked it up, sucked it to 'clean' it, and gave it back to him.

I'm not suggesting this is great parenting, but just to give you some perspective of how things are when your on your 4th baby.

It's very normal to be over the top with your first, try to relax a little.

He’ll be fine, babies need germs to help develop their biomes

Exactly this.

Oh he'll be fine OP, honestly don't worry.

Agree with everyone else. I remember when my first child was a few weeks old, watching my 9 month old nephew licking everything he could reach. Including the wheels of his pram. I realised then that sterilising everything was futile.

Definitely stop googling. I understand the anxieties to an extent, it’s your first baby and they are the utter world to you, but experience will teach you that this is nothing at all to worry about. Come back to us on one of those gorgeous PFB threads in a few years to tell us about this once baby has licked a lot more stuff! Hope you are ok and can find a way to let this one go.

Instead of reading up and freaking out on the subject of germs, do yourself a favour and read up on how immune systems develop. And he prepared to try and get your anxiety in check by the time he’s crawling around and touching everything. You won’t be able to keep him confined to your home when he starts that either, it wouldn’t be fair on him, so you’re going to have to let it go.

I feel like I was similar when my toddler was a newborn but really, germs are great for babies and I wish I had done a lot of things very differently.

Read up on germ theory or old friends theory if you can, they were really informative. My 2yo is as grotty as they get now and I actually strangely love it!

Please don't over sterilise everything, some germs help build immune systems. As someone earlier said, they're quite tough little things. In 9 months you'll find her happily eating mud in the garden whilst the cat is enthusiastically licking her face.

The only people that bang on about this stuff incessantly is the cleaning industry. And they kind of fuel your paranoia because they want to sell you stuff to 😉

😱😱😱😱😱