Aachoo!; Oh no, one of my kids has a cold!
I remember the first time one of my boys got sick. They were only a month or so old, and one of them (don't remember which one) woke up with a fever of 99.9. I freaked out and frantically asked my husband, "What are we going to do?" I was ready to rush my baby off to the hospital. Steve calmly replied, "We'll give him some baby Tylenol and he'll be fine." Sure enough, an hour or so later, his temperature was normal. I had completely freaked for no reason. Well, not completely for "no reason" - my child was sick and I didn't know what to do. I decided that night to try and take things a bit more in stride. I was going to wear myself out if I freaked out about everything that happened: especially colds and fevers.
At our next pediatrician appointment, we asked about colds and twins. Big question: if one has a cold, we should keep him separated from his brother, right? Wrong! Our pediatrician told us that we could try really hard to do this, but the other twin would end up catching the cold anyway - just weeks later. Then we would be stuck with a sick child for two weeks and then another sick child two weeks later. He told us it would be better (and easier for everyone) if they just caught each other's cold a few days apart. Then we were only talking two weeks with runny noses instead of four.
Our pediatrician also told us to not bother keeping toys, bottles, binkies, blankets - anything separate. Since they would end up catching each other's cold no matter what we did - it would just be easier to have them share everything.
This was some of the best advice we got from our pediatrician; concerning colds. It's also advice I pass on to anyone who will listen. Not only does it make things less stressful; your life is much easier. We started out keeping bottles separate (color coordinated: blue for Logan and Green for Alec), so we could keep track of how much they ate. Even that our pediatrician said we didn't have to do. As long as the boys were gaining weight, they were fine. After that, everything was fair game for both boys: bottles, binkies, food, etc.
So my advice concerning colds is: don't panic and get out the Tylenol, don't try to keep one child quarantined from the rest of the family and be ready for a couple weeks of colds as they pass it from one to the other.
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