When you become a parent for the first time, you coddle your newborn baby more than you probably should.
I remember when my wife and I had our first child, we went above and beyond to give that child the world.
We took extreme precaution about everything. We washed all his new clothes in specific baby detergent, we sanitized every pacifier that hit the ground, we limited who could touch our baby, and we sterilized everything and anything the baby made contact with. When it came time for my wife to return to work, we had to put our son in a daily nursery program. It took us weeks to find a nursery we liked, because we had such specific preferences for our newborn. A lot of the nurseries we toured had too many kids, or not enough staff. Sometimes, we didn’t like the smell or the daily schedule, causing us to walk away. When my wife was nearing the end of her maternity leave, we had to really consider what was important to us and our baby. We ended up selecting a nursery that had recently upgraded their HVAC system, and installed air purifiers into each room. They also had brand new humidifiers and dehumidifiers on hand, depending on the season. We appreciated this feature, because the overall air quality felt so much better during our tour. There were no nasty baby smells lingering the halls, and there wasn’t a speck of dust floating around in the air. Our son didn’t have any respiratory issues that we knew of, but because he was our first, we wanted to take extra precaution.