My daughter almost always gets sick after we return home from a trip on an airplane. Is there anything I can do to keep her healthy?

By Dr. Roy Benaroch for Sniffle Solutions

Many cold and flu viruses are transmitted when you touch surfaces. And when you’re on an airplane, you’re touching armrests and tray tables that may not be very clean. Since so many people are touching the same surfaces, it’s all too easy to pick up germs on your hands.

So always have your child wash hands thoroughly before and after using the bathroom on a plane. And when you can’t get access to a sink and soap, use a hand sanitizer that has at least 60 percent alcohol. If you’re worried about the drying effects of alcohol, use a hand sanitizer that has added moisturizers, like aloe.

And since the air on planes is so dry and uncomfortable, you might also want to bring along some saline nasal spray, which you can use to help keep both yours and your daughter’s nasal passages well moisturized.

It’s also important to stay hydrated by drinking lots of water — that goes for you and your daughter.

Finally, try to avoid sick people when possible. If you’re sitting next to someone who’s coughing and sniffling and the flight is not full, speak up and politely ask a flight attendant if you can move to different seats.

Tags: Family and Home, health, homemaking, housekeeping
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If you are searching for that perfect valentines gift for a techno-mommy on your list, we’ve got a winner for you! We have stumbled across an iPhone app that is truly a mommy-tool calendaring wonder! The TotalBaby app definitely makes our MyTime Calendar recommendation list! The TotalBaby Application is a calendar and event tracking solution for kids and babies whose application is limitless!

Developed in 2009, this application was the brain-child of ANDESigned, LLC and is truly inspired work. It allows you to track multiple children from birth to whenever! To better explain this application, I will use my own family of 4 children as an example. Each child was entered with all their birth information and a current photo. I was then able to enter all their vaccination information through a slick interface that allows you to record by vaccine, date and even be as specific as the time of day. You can also make notes at each vaccination entry about how they reacted, doctor recommendations, etc. Next, I was able to enter all the doctor visits I wanted to for each child. For most of my children, this included just the well-visit check-ups for which I entered their measurement info and any pertinent doctor advice I wanted to keep track of. But I have one child that has had health conditions that necessitated specialists so I was able to enter these “sick” visits as well to track exactly when he went and what was discussed.

Total Baby is the most Complete Baby Logging and Tracking Application available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

But it doesn’t stop there! There is a wonderful diary entry area for each child where you can use pictures from your iPhone gallery or snap one for immediate use and couple it with any information you want to include. This is great when your child says or does something funny or memorable and you want to remember it but may not remember at the end of the day to write it into your journal. This app lets you jot it down right as it happens! There is also a milestone area…you title each entry so you can track when they took their first step (with photos!), first words, first smile, or even their first day of school! How about those parent/teacher conferences, concerts or special assignments? Yup, you can record those too! This area also comes with a timing feature so you can track the exact moment you want to notate through a handy drop-down menu that deafaults to the current moment!

If you choose, you can email the TotalBaby reports. Just specify dates or "all data" and you get a well organized synopsis of your child's history!

This event timing is one of the coolest features. Total Baby combines 13 separate timing and tracking functions into a single complete solution. You can track events for each child like diaper changes, bottle feedings/nursing (even which side they nursed on and for how long!!), naps, bathtimes, and one of my absolute favorite features (because I have multiple children to track) is the ability to track doses of medication. For instance, if I have more than one child that requires medication, I can track exactly what I give each child (time, quantity and specific medication) so I know exactly what they’ve received and when they are due for another dose. This is invaluable for sleep deprived mothers who may or may not have the ability to trust their memories at two o’clock in the morning.

To wrap up our review, all this information is literally at your fingertips! So when your friends ask you “so when was she born?” or your doctor asks “how many wet diapers did he have today?” or your child asks you “what did I do when I was 2?”. Not only is it easily accessible but you can also back up the files as well as email them (choosing all information or just specific dates)! We have looked at several other baby/child tracking apps and this one truly shines above all the rest. For only $4.99, it is a totally fun app that is so practical every mom should have it!

Our only complaint (and we had to reach to find a complaint with this app!) was that a growth chart would be very helpful to have in addition to the growth recording abilities it now has. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that this feature will be included in future updates!

Tags: Calendaring Tips, Family and Home, health, parenting, product reviews
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Food allergies are thankfully not something I have had to deal with directly with my children. But I have been frightened enough for several kids that play with my own children and have peanut allergies that I have felt compelled to learn more about them. What I have discovered is a world of wonderful parents and specialists that have an immense amount of experience and knowledge and were willing to share it with me. I would like to take the time this week to share some of this insightful wisdom with all of you in hopes that it will help enlighten us all as to ways we can keep all of our kids safe and positive at school.

I’d like to start off this series by clarifying some of the different peanut related allergies out there. Most nut-related allergies seem to fall into two major categories…Peanuts and Tree Nuts, with the peanut allergy usually being the most volatile and sever. As with all food allergies, label reading is a necessity. According to the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network, all FDA-regulated manufactured food products that contain peanut as an ingredient are required by U.S. law to list the word “peanut” on the product label. If they contain a tree nut as an ingredient, they are also required by U.S. law to list the specific tree nut on the product label.

In addition to any foods with warning labels that reference “may contain nuts” or “may be manufactured in a plant that processes nuts”, here are some foods that should be avoided in a child with a “peanut” allergy:

• African, Asian (especially chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Thai, and Vietnamese), and Mexican dishes
• baked goods (e.g., pastries, cookies)
• candy (including chocolate candy)
• chili
• egg rolls
• enchilada sauce
• marzipan
• mole sauce
• nougat

If you are dealing with a tree nut allergy, here are a few of the ingredients you should avoid:

• artificial nuts
• beechnut
• Brazil nuts
• butternut
• cashews
• chestnuts
• coconut
• filberts/hazelnuts
• ginkgo nut
• hickory nuts
• macadamia nuts
• marzipan/almond paste
• natural nut extract (e.g., almond, walnut)
• nut butters (e.g., cashew butter)
• nutmeat
• pecans
• pesto
• pine nuts (also referred to as pinyon nuts)
• pistachios
• praline
• shea nut
• walnuts

As an extra warning, Wal Mart brand “great value” has now started processing everything with nuts even down to their ice cream and whale crackers. So avoid these foods altogether.

For those of you who are like me who don’t have a child with allergies but want to know some “safe” snacks you can send to school with your child that will not harm one of his friends that have a peanut allergy, here are some suggestions from a fellow mom who deals with this allergy in her own son. She offers these suggestions with the warning that manufacturer packaging and processing continually changes so please READ LABELS of any snacks you choose and watch for any of the following: peanuts/nuts, peanut/nut butter, peanut/nut oil, peanut/nut flour, peanut/nut meal, or any of the statements “May contain traces of peanut/nuts” or “Manufactrued in a facility that also processes peanuts (and/or other nuts)”…

• Crackers: Pepperidge Farm Cheddar Goldfish (plain, pretzel or cheddar), Cheez-Its, Cheese Nips, Keepbler Twon House Crackers, Ritz Crackers (plain), Triscuits (original), What Thins (original), Chicken in a Bisket Crackers (original), Kraft Handi-Snacks Crackers with Cheese Dip
• Potato Chips: Pringles, Lays (plain), Cheetors, Tostitos, Fritos
• Pretzels: Rold Gold
• Cookies: Original Oreos or Double Stuff, Teddy Grahams (not the trail mix), Barnum Animal Crackers, Rice Krispy Treats (plain), Nabisco Vanilla Wafers, Honey Maid Graham Crackers (plain or cinnamon), Fig Newtons, Chips-A-Hoy (NOT MINIS), Hostess Ho-Ho’s & Twinkies, Pepperidge Farm Milano/Chessmen/Shortbread/Sugar Cookes
• Candy: Smarties, Starburst, Swedish Fish, Tootsie Rolls, Tootsie Pops, Skittles, Bubble Gum, lollipops, Sweet-Tarts, Air Heads, Lifesavers, Hershey Kisses (plain, not with almonds & not Hugs), Jet Puff Marshmallows
• Gummy Snaks: (NOT Brachs or Jelly Belly) Only Betty Crocker or Nabisco Fruit Snacks including Fruit by the Foot, Fruit Roll-Ups, and Gushers.
• Doughnuts: Krispy Kreme “Original Glazed” (only from the store – with or without sprinkles. Not pre-packaged from a grocery store).

Join us in our forum all week as we discuss the topic of peanut allergies and how to deal with them in schools. Coming up this week…Suggestions for helping your child self-manage their allergy, Bullying and ways to avoid it, Lunch room techniques and Guidelines for safety in the classroom.

Tags: Family and Home, food allergies, health, parenting, safety, teachers, tips and tricks
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I have a child that has been diagnosed with “Reactive  Airway Disease” which is a fancy way of saying “asthma”. He was placed on the medication Singulair when he was 5 yrs old, among others, which seemed to help his symptoms a great deal. It has been several years and we have found that we have been able to take him off of all the asthma medications now but one…Singulair. While this medication has noticeably reduced his asthmatic tendencies, we found there was one unusual side affect. We noticed that we were beginning to have frequent bed wetting issues again. This sincerely upset my little one because it was not something that he consciously did. He would wake up very sad that it had happened. We were surprised since it had been nearly 3 years since we had had to deal with this. It seemed odd that it’s recurrence coincided with the use of the Singulair. This was not a connection that I made on my own but linked the two after talking to several parents that surprisingly were having similar issues. Interestingly enough, we had all been giving the Singulair to our children in the evening. Once we changed the dosage to the morning, the bed wetting stopped!

As I began to research this phenomenon, I discovered that I was far from alone in these observations.  While there is no conclusive evidence available to support the link between bed wetting and Singulair usage, there are many parents out there that have observed these same effects. If your child has to be on the drug Singulair and is having issues with bed wetting, I would encourage parents to experiment with giving it at a different time of day. For us, dosing in the morning rather than the evening made all the difference. I hope this discovery can help other young children dealing with this difficult issue.

Tags: Family and Home, health, parenting, safety, toddlers
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