It’s a natural parental instinct to want to care for your child when she’s sick. It’s also natural for illnesses to spread. So when your child is down with an illness, how do you stay healthy yourself?

Obviously you’ll want to avoid sharing any illnesses with your child, but you’ll still need to provide care until she recovers. Stay ahead of illness by adopting simple strategies when your child is sick.

• Practice Prevention: It’s always easier to avoid illness than beat it, so stay current on your flu vaccination each year. If your child is diagnosed with the flu, seek a preventative dose of Tamilflu from your physician to help beat it back. Of course, all those health basics – wash your hands regularly, eat nutritious meals and get plenty of sleep – go double when you have a sick child.
• Develop No-Go Zones: Ideally, your child heals best when confined to her room, but that may not always be feasible. At the very least, keep your child out of the kitchen. It’s easy to transmit germs when coloring or eating, and there’s no better vector for sickness to enter your body than on food.
• Cut Back on the Cuddles: This can be a tough one, but do your best to curtail intimate contact with your sick child. It’s tempting to cuddle them as you ease them through their illness, but if you get sick, you’ll be a less effective caregiver.
• Do Laundry Hot: Most of the time, washing laundry in cold water is fine. When your child is ill, switch your wash day routine to hot water. It’s more effective at killing any germs that may linger in clothes and bedding to make others sick.
• Sanitize, But Don’t Go Overboard: It’s great practice to use disinfectant wipes to help kill germs on tables and areas of the house your sick child shares. Don’t worry about sanitizing her toys after she plays with them, particularly if she doesn’t share them with others. By handling potentially infected toys, you’re only increasing your chances of catching the disease.

Just like the only way to keep your child from getting sick is to quarantine her, you’d have to take extreme measures to guarantee you stay healthy when your child is sick. Simple precautions can keep you healthy, however, even as you provide care to your little one.