My mom makes my kid sick

Hmh, have you ever thought of that this 'sickness' could be psychosomatic?

I mean that the sozlet perhaps gets ill, because grandma left. Or, that grandma's visit was too stressy for her. Or, .... hundred posibilties.

Stressy could be part of it.

Is it possible that it may be an allergic reaction? You don't mention what sort of "sick" here but... Maybe mom's perfume, hair spray, laundry detergent, etc.. and the sozlet don't agree???

My Husband works in a hospital and it seems we have our share of colds and virus's more than other families. We all do a lot of hand washing and even careful not to share the same towel to dry our hands on. This has lessened our problem. I think healthcare workers can carry germs not only on their hands but on their clothes also. Explain the situation to your mom and ask her to be more careful when she has contact with her grandchild. Take note to see if this improves the situation.

My father was a doctor in a hospital- as far as I remeber, my sister and I weren't more sick then others, even less.

Same is nowadays, where we have two godchildren in families, where father/mother work as doctors in hospitals.

It's a virusy kind of sick -- barfing, colds. So far this ones been barfy and fever. Still, allergies is an interesting possibility, will think about it more.

I tend to think the same thing about healthcare workers, colorbook. What practical advice exactly, though? Make sure she washes all of her clothes before she visits? Some sort of kiss embargo, or only cheeks?

Well, might really be something else, but that does look like a psychosomatic illness per excellence.

I don't think so, Walter.

You say she doesn't have much physical contact with others outside the family. The more contact she has with anybody, the more likely to be ill... Daycare kids have fewer colds than stay-at-homes in elementary school -- because they've had them all in daycare!

I'm with Wy - my eldest daughter caught everything at nursery school and passed it on to her sister - so she got everything younger - but then was healthier at nursery school (they go at 3 here).

when they start school or go to playgroups they do tend to get a few sicky viruses - the 24 hour variety. Then their immunity builds and they only rarely go down with one.

It is supposed to be good for the immune system and help prevent asthma for children to go down with and fight off minor illnesses - so there is a silver lining! poor sozlet.

I was going to post an answer re building the immune system being generally a good thing, and do a small rant about antigerm products, but I'll let it go as Vivien said it well.

It's true that some germs that thrive (sometimes) in hospitals are not good, some of the staphylococcus varieties, for example.

I think, for what it's worth, that the worst thing that will come of this exposure is that Sozlet will associate being sick with your mother.

Mom really should know better. There are so many weird buglets in a hospital. I think that is would be very reasonable if you told her only to kiss the sozlet on the cheek.

Here's a thought. Does your Mom bring any special foods or do you tend to cook different richer things when your mom visits? My husband used to get sick to his stomach after visiting with his mother in North Carolina. It was a pig out from morning until night and his system was no longer able to tolerate the high fat content and over-rich desserts and fried foods (even the veggies were flavored with lard or fatback) and he would always throw up and be dizzy for about 2 days while he was withdrawing from the high fat content of her food. We didn't have much luck getting her to roll back the fat, her idea of cutting back the fat was to roast the chicken in Crisco in the oven instead of frying it in Crisco, because she thought baked was better than fried. I would get sick, only sooner than Rodney did. It was a real bone of contention, she thought I was criticizing her food preparation, but I had recently had my gall bladder removed and fat made me sick real quick. You haven't lived until you have had to leave your plate after 5 minutes and spend the rest of the night in the bathroom. The thing is, she actually was a very good, very authentic southern cook, we just couldn't tolerate the high fat and high sugar diet.

Ha!

Osso, yeah, I know what you mean about the soap. Read a whole thing about it somewhere recently -- water, regular old ivory-type soap, no antibacterial! counterproductive!

The kid has indeed had a lot of out-of-the family contact, especially her twice-weekly classes and twice-weekly playdates with her best friend, Jack. When they started playing together regularly, they each got sick. And she often got sick at the beginning of new classes, though that has improved.

I think my take on it at this point is that everyone has their own constellation of germs (think Pigpen) and it just is a matter of how many opportunities the germs have to jump ship. Four days of snuggling, kissing, hugging, laughing, and the occasional cough and sneeze and yeah, guess it's to be expected.

I admit that I would love to take Phoenix's suggestion, but it would go over like (tryptophan-addled brain can't come up with anything better than) a lead balloon and wouldn't even be any kind of guarantee, itself. So will just do a lot of (plain ol' Ivory soap) handwashing next time, step up the fluids and make sure the sozlet gets enough sleep, and keep fingers crossed.

The sleep thing could be part of the risk factor (not food so much, though, we usually just cook as usual), since we always seem to need to wake up the sozlet for various planned activities. (Normally I usually let her sleep until she wakes up, herself.) Yeah, that can't help.

Meanwhile, poor little sickie perked up enough to have some of the Thanksgiving feast, though said feast was abbreviated since little sickie was doing her best limpet impersonation and would NOT be pried free of Mama, who was also Chef. So I did what I could one-handed, (luckily had already made stuffing and put turkey in the oven), which included cranberry sauce (easy) and carrots in almond sauce (harder) but had to cut a couple of dishes out. Will make 'em tomorrow.

Thanks for you input, everyone.

Poor little sozlet....

Re: My mom makes my kid sick

Sorry if this is a bit over the top, but I crunch experimental data for a living, so I can't help asking a few questions to cross-check your evidence.

1) How often do other children get sick when your mother visits them?
2) What third factors, if any, can you think of that might explain the correlation? For example, do your mother's visits tend to fall on your doughter's birthday, your birthday, or Christmas -- a time that is known as 'flu season' for a reason? (Okay, bad example -- you say she visits 4 times a year. You get the point though.)
3) What happens when you and Sozlet visit your mother's place? Does that make Sozlet sick too?

I think I have an opinion on the issue, but I don't want it to color your answers, so I'll just leave it at that. For now, just tell the Sozlet to get well soon. You too of course -- sick, cranky three-year-olds are a pain in the ... arm.

Take care

1.) Data unavailable. She has only one grandchild, and hence only one child that she visits for extended (~3-4 days) periods and whom she has extensive physical contact with.

2.) Lots of possible third factors. Talked about the lack of sleep one above. However, only one visit per year tends to fall in the "flu season" category (usually birthdays OR Christmas). The last visit when the sozlet got sick was, like, July.

3.) Data limited. Only one visit so far. That visit was a multi-parter -- we spent very little time actually with my mom, probably less than a day's worth. I don't remember if the sozlet got sick after that -- I wasn't paying attention to correllation at the time.

sozlet seems to be better, but MY throat is awful sore, now. Grrr.

By the way my thinking on this is best summed up in the long post a couple responses up.

Just you TRY and tell your mother that she can't kiss her grandbaby on the lips!
Does you little girl miss her grandmother when she's gone? Does she have a good time with her when she's there? Someone mentioned stress earlier...
Soz, have you brought this up to your mother? As a nurse, she may be quite interested in your findings, as long as you refrain from sounding accusatory, and between the two of you, maybe you'll figure out what to do about it (and maybe grandma herself will choose to not kiss the baby on the mouth).
I think your best bet is to step up the preventive measures when your mother visits and hope that your baby outgrows it. She probably will. According to the posts here, kids have to be "immunized". Makes sense to me.