Well, It's Obvious When You Point It Out

We went to the doctor recently to discuss a plan for dealing with Fiona's allergies and colds. Each time she gets sick (or allergic) the cold starts in her nose, but quickly migrates to her throat, and she winds up coughing the night away (and nobody gets any sleep).

When she was 18 months old the doctors thought she might have asthma, so they put us on a program involving using inhalers when she developed symptoms. But as she's gotten older it's pretty clear that she's not asthmatic, since her symptoms always start in her sinuses and never migrate to her chest, and we're increasingly loathe to use the steroids in her inhalers if they might not be necessary.

So we got a new plan with the doctor involving nasal spray and bacitracin and various details you don't need. But what struck me was an offhand comment the doctor made as we discussed the plan, when he looked across his desk at Fiona sitting in my lap, cuddling up as she often does with her thumb in her mouth.

"Of course," he said, "kids like this get sick easily because of their habits. They touch something and then the thumb goes straight in the mouth."

And Andrea and I sat their dumbfounded; with several graduate degrees between us we'd never paused to consider that maybe, just maybe, Fiona's thumbsucking might lead to added exposure to germs.

Maybe I do need a basic parenting class.