This post was sponsored by Floating Hospital for Children as part of an Influencer Activation for Influence Central and all opinions expressed in my post are my own.
Last year I wrote about my nephew, Parker, and how exciting and nerve-wracking it was when he finally came home after being born two months early. His NICU adventure was ending, but his life adventure was beginning. Now he’s a one-year-old!
I got a head start on my big sis, and my kids will be five and eight this summer. I’d love to say it gets easier, but in some ways, parenting gets more difficult. We are hard-wired to have concerns throughout life, and that’s why Floating Hospital for Children helps with the concerns. They are a reliable and local source of information for parents like me. What is it? Floating Hospital for Children is the full-service children’s hospital of Tufts Medical Center, and is located in downtown Boston with partnerships in the community. They provide pediatric inpatient and outpatient services in every medical and surgical specialty. And that’s from general pediatric to the care of the most complex cancers, heart diseases, and traumas.
At Floating Hospital for Children, patients are the inspiration. They prove every day that you don’t have to be big to be strong. The Floating Hospital’s strength is its size. It’s a smaller, more intimate environment to allow patients and families to feel comfortable, and to truly experience family-centered care. For more information on keeping your kids healthy and strong, check out www.floatinghospital.org. They’re also a wonderful resource for a concern we have in New England.
While forecasting tick populations is not an exact science, ticks are expected to be abundant because of weather conditions and predictions. Experts encourage people to take precautions every year. Lynne Karlson, MD, Chief of General Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center, shares these helpful tips for preventing tick bites. She also shares tips on what to do if you find a tick on your child:
1 – Use insect repellent containing DEET.
2 – Wear long pants, tucked into socks, and no sandals in the woods.
3 – Check your child every evening for ticks. In order to transmit Lyme disease, the tick must be on for greater than 24 hours.
4 – If a tick is found, use a gloved hand to pull it straight out. Then wash the bite with soap and water.
5 – If you live in a wooded area, get tick tweezers to help remove the bodies of the ticks before they become completely embedded and do damage.
We live in a wooded area, and these tips are vital. We do tick checks before every bath, or before bedtime, in case we don’t do baths every day. I often find that we bring them in the house on our shoes or clothing. Tick tweezers are vital in getting them fully out. We love where we live, and we need to do our part to prevent and treat tick bites for our children.