The pre-milestone clean out

Have you ever noticed that your child does a cold, cough, flu, gastro or some other sort of sickness right before they reach a milestone?

If you think back, or if you pay close enough attention for upcoming milestones, your child may well do their own little style of clean out. Amazing, hey? It’s their clever little body doing some preparation.

I noticed that about 2 weeks before Evie started crawling she had a cold. Once she was back to her happy, bubbly little self (as opposed to her snot-bubble self!) she began crawling. She did the same about a week before she got her first tooth. And most recently she’s had a cough and pretty flat… And yes, you guessed it, she just started walking!

Proud parenting moment!

With her crawling ‘clean-out’ I didn’t really notice the connection. Then I heard something about the process of their bodies preparing themselves and remembered her pre-crawling cold. When I looked back through her baby book I noticed she was also a little snotty before she started rolling over. Since then I actually started paying more attention to notice the teething and walking clean-outs. Of course she has also had moments when she’s been sick without reaching a milestone (that I’ve noticed!) – our week of ‘sharing is caring’ family gastro a few months ago deserved a milestone though!!

She started walking a couple of weeks ago… Yep you guessed it!! Snot!

After a little more research, here is what I found:
- children who do high temperatures are less likely to have cancer later in life (I’d certainly think twice before using medication to bring down a fever!)
- by doing a cold, flu or similar illness your child is clearing out any yuckiness that their body wants to get rid of and they are building up their immune system (I doubt this is new news to anyone!) That is why they often begin to crawl, walk, teeth, etc. afterwards though. I guess you could look at it as a relaxing holiday (if you’re not drowning in washing and dirty tissues) for children – if you took a relaxing holiday wouldn’t you come back feeling strong, healthy and refreshed?
- our ancestors celebrated colds, flus, vomiting, etc. and congratulated those who did them – it was a sign of having a smart body! They didn’t carry on working, parenting, running errands… They allowed their body the time it needed.

So who wants to start a ‘flu’ group with me?!? Meaning that whenever one of us is sick, the rest of the group take over the cooking, cleaning, parenting, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, working…. Seems a strange thing to ask in today’s society doesn’t it?