Traveling with a nonvaxed 8 month old

[AprilM]

We are planning to take a 10 day cruise to the Caribbean in March with ds who will then be 8 months. We don't vax and don't plan to, but I have to admit the thought of going on a cruise and being surrounded with 100's of people scares me. Have any of you ever taken your non vaxed LO on a cruise or out of the country? Anyone contract any infectious diseases or sicknesses, and are there any supplements (like vitamin c) I should be taking with me just in case?
Thanks!

[tanyalynn]

When I travel, I bring sodium ascorbate (a kind of vitC, if you're not familiar with it) and since you'd be pretty limited in what you could get on a ship (vs going to visit family in a city/town) I'd probably bring either a probiotic supp or a jar of fermented veggies. I'd think a stomach bug would be more likely than a really bad cold. Whatever your normal routine is for illness (if you have a normal routine--my son was sick a lot, by 8mos I had our routine down pat ) I'd try to do that. Maybe something like sambuchol as additional support for an illness.

[Marnica]

I have an unvaxed 8 month old too and while we haven't been on a cruise (I wish!!) I would not worry about it if I had the chance to go Id jump at it! Just take SA with you, probiotics and keep his immune system as strong as you can. Have a great time!

[Full Heart]

I'd be more concerned about a norovirus myself. Make sure you wash hands of you and your lo frequently, take probiotics and some SA. Have fun!

[AprilM]

I have heard so much about SA and probiotics, but I am not too sure WHY they are recommended, what they do, and how often you should give them. Do you just give SA when your LO is sick, or is this something that should be given on a daily basis? Thanks!

[tanyalynn]

We take SA daily, I know others disagree on that. I think the amount of vitamin C our bodies work best on is more than we (my family, I mean) will get from our diet, so we supplement. We should be supplementing with a bioflavonoid, I've had a hard time finding one, but someone shared a link a bit ago so maybe we'll start doing that the way we should've been all along. Other families only use SA when they're sick. I've found that it really, really helped minimize the severity of my son's illnesses when he was young.

Probiotics--the health of our immune systems and the health of our guts are intimately intertwined, plus the healthier our guts, the better we digest and absorb nutrients from our foods. We do probiotic foods, but if we didn't, we'd use supplements for this. I've found making kimchee and pickles and such to be really easy and fun and incredibly yummy.

http://mothering.com/discussions/sho...d.php?t=406983

This thread is a good one for discussions of gut health and nutrition and immune function. Don't be overwhelmed by the length.

[AprilM]

How much SA do you take on a daily basis? And do you up the dose when your LO is actually sick? Can you do harm in taking SA daily, and would regular vitamin C work just as well, or does it need to be Sodium Ascorbate? I went to a Naturopathic Doctor and she knew nothing about SA.

[tanyalynn]

How much to take is pretty individual. The basic human need, as I understand it, is 50mg/kg body weight when healthy, 250mg/kg when ill (that's 1.1g/10lb body weight, I can't think in metric). But, my kids and I have a high toxic load (thank you amalgam fillings) so my kids have rarely been at such low amounts as the guidelines above would suggest. And my son seems to need more extra vitC when he's sick than those guidelines would suggest--there's really no substitute for figuring out your own kids (and yourself). But I can definitely tell when my son's fighting something off, I can watch his vitC need go up and then come down. And when he's fighting off 2 illnesses, it goes up higher (we had lots of overlapping illnesses in winters past).

Other types of vitC are also effective, I think, but especially at the high doses, the sodium ascorbate is really gentle on the stomach. I think the equivalent in ascorbic acid would really upset our stomachs.

[AprilM]

What kind of SA do you use? I was just on Nutibiotics site looking for it, and I called them to find out what their recommended dosage was for babies, and the woman I spoke to said that she had no idea because they only indicate dosages for children 5 and up. She couldn't even tell me if SA was safe for babies. (Unfortunately my Naturopath has no idea about SA or I would just ask her) How do you know it is safe for babies and at what dose?

[tanyalynn]

I didn't give it directly to my son until he was eating solids, before then I could just load myself up and he'd get enough to be okay (slept fine even with a cold, but if I slacked off, his nose would stuff up and he'd have trouble sleeping at night cause he couldn't breathe through his nose) but if he'd gotten something potentially serious like WC, I would've given it directly to him even before solids.

I had to experiment to see how much my son needed, it really was trial-and-error. I dose at least 3x/day, if they're sick and I'm trying to figure out how much they need, I'll do it more often til I get loose stools, then back off. With practice, it gets pretty easy. At the beginning, I had to write things down.

From a practical standpoint, I know it's safe for a baby because my son's 2y9m now and a lot healthier than he used to be. Old posts by Momtezuma Tuatara are always worth a read. But she doesn't discuss (that I remember) how toxic load affects vitC need. She used it quite effectively for illness though, and one of the keys (that I've also found to be true) is that to make an impact, you really do need to be near bowel tolerance. Giving an adult an extra 1 or 2 grams of vitC per day when they're sick isn't going to do anything, and given how much my son tends to need, 1-2 grams wouldn't have done much for him either.

Nutribiotics is a good brand. I buy either Bronson (item 50B) or Now sodium ascorbate, we go through large quantities (I'm doing biomed with the kids and myself to get the mercury out, and daily bowel tolerance vitC has been a significant part of that, but I used it for illnesses before I knew what was going on with our health).

[eireann]

anyone use biogaia probiotics for your LOs? it's the L. reuteri strain of bacteria that supposedly does wonders for babes w/ colic, and beyond.

i take acidophilus and i'm looking to get a really effective probiotic into our systems.