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Early years

11th May 2018

This mum wants to hand-wash her baby’s teddies after every visitor

Is she right?

Anna O'Rourke

This mum wants to hand-wash her baby's teddies after every visitor

Are you paranoid about germs?

You’d exhaust yourself trying to sanitise everything in your home that your child might get their hands (or mouth) on, but one mum has admitted that she wants to wash her baby’s teddies after every time she has a visitor to her house.

Taking to Netmums, the woman said her baby had recently started putting everything into his mouth, including his soft toys.

She hand-washed the toys recently and became annoyed when friends who called over picked them up just after they had dried.

“I have a 3 month old son who’s just started teething so is sucking and biting everything he gets hold of, he has loads of teddies but two that he has all the time and chews on,” she wrote.

“I gave them a sink wash… They took two days to dry as they are hand-knitted and when they had finally dried my friends were over again and picked them up off the radiator and started touching them again.

This mum wants to hand-wash her baby's teddies after every visitor

“I got really wound up and didn’t say anything because they had just got off the train and I can’t help but think of all the dirty hands on trains, which are now on my son’s toys, which he is going to put in his mouth.

“Am I being ridiculous for wanting to wash them again and getting annoyed at people for touching his toys?”

Some parents agreed, saying they were also nervous of germs but others thought the mum was being a little too paranoid.

“I’m exactly the same! A lot of people will probably think it’s over the top but the floor and public places could have any sorts of germs on them,” wrote one.

“You cannot protect against every germ going and to obsessively try to do so can do more harm than good – for you as well as baby. They are going to come into contact with germs, it’s a fact of life.”

What do you reckon? Join the conversation in the Facebook comments or on Twitter.