It’s cold and flu season, and unfortunately my household was hit with sneezes, coughs, runny noses, and sore throats. With a newborn still in the NICU, I tried my best to keep our household from getting the cold and flu at all cost. I encouraged consistency of washing hands (which my two year old was more than happy to comply with), I cleaned obsessively, went behind everyone with disinfectant spray, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg . Unfortunately, my efforts didn’t help one bit, and the sad part is that I was the first one to get sick. I’m still trying to figure out how in the world that happened.
Breastmilk has taken over my life.
I ended up having a sore throat and my head felt like a cold was on its way. Now, I’m that person who hates the doctors office, so I try to avoid it all cost. The thought of sitting in a waiting room with a ton of complete strangers who are sick with the cold and flu literally frightens me to death. I knew that I was sick, but surely those people are sicker than me and I didn’t want to risk getting what they had. So silly me stayed at home and tried to treat myself before heading to the urgent care.
Since my baby isn’t at home with us right now, I have to exclusively pump my breast milk. When you pump, you have to take the same precautions as breastfeeding, so just know that what applies to one, it applies to the other. To provide safe milk to my baby, I try to stick with all natural products as much as possible. After going up and down the medicine aisle looking for the perfect product to help me quickly feel better, I decided to go with All-Natural Zarbee’s Cough and Cold nighttime. I saw “all-natural”, “throat”, and “nighttime” and thought, this is exactly what I need! So I brought it to the Pharmacist to make sure that it was okay to take, and she said yes, it’s perfectly fine. So I went home that night and made me a nice warm mug of medicine to sip on and I was knocked out sleep until the next morning. I woke up feeling amazing! I started reading the box more in depth and it said that the product included melatonin. I know that melatonin is natural and helps with sleep, but I wanted to do more research on it. So, I decided to search the web and read more about the product during my morning power pump.
Well, you know how everyone tells you not to google anything unless you want to be freaked out? I’m here to tell you that they are absolutely right. I saw so much conflicting information on melatonin that I didn’t know if I should keep the milk that I had pumped that morning or if I should dump it. So, I called my lactation specialist and she said that she couldn’t find many studies that included melatonin, but what she did find suggested that it was ok to take in low moderation. To be on the safe side, she told me to call the Infant Risk Hotline to make sure. So, I gave them a call to see if it was ok. They looked up the Zarbee’s product and went over the ingredients. They said that the dosage of melatonin was ok to use since it was one time, but I should have been more concerned about the Vitamin C. Honestly, I was so confused. Isn’t Vitamin C a good thing? I was always told that it was good to take Vitamin C during the cold and flu season to help boost your immune system. The Infant Risk Hotline told me that if you take too much Vitamin C, it can effect your baby’s liver. I still had a hard time believing it, so I did more research and found that it is true. Now, I’m no doctor, so please take the time to research and ask your doctor about it and find out what’s best for you. For me, Vitamin C would’ve been the last thing I would’ve thought of to be harmful to my baby, so I thought I should give you a heads up just in case you think like I do. Have you heard of this before? Please tell me that I’m not the only one.
