Newborns amaze us with their delicacy. They are tiny little beings completely dependent on you to provide for them and keep them safe. One of the toughest areas some parents deal with in their child’s safety and comfort are infant allergies.

Skin Allergies

The first potential allergy parents might notice is a detergent allergy. Baby’s sensitive skin may react to the detergents you use in your washing machine or even to certain fabrics. The same can be said of soaps and lotions. Babies that tend to break out from some sort of skin allergy should be examined by their pediatrician and care must be given to avoid allergy producing products.

Cotton and water will keep baby clean enough for the first couple of weeks and bathing every two or three days after that may help as well. Change detergents to something mild with fewer chemicals or consider using less in a wash. Fabric softeners and any other chemicals should be completely avoided.

Food Allergies

The scariest kind of allergies in a baby is food allergies. Babies who legitimately suffer from a lactose intolerance or milk allergy can get very sick very fast as newborns. Fortunately, there are many soy milk products that are non dairy which can help give these babies the nutrition they need.

Other common culprits of food allergies are egg whites, peanuts, and wheat. Strawberries, chocolate, tomatoes, citrus fruits and shellfish can also be strong allergy triggers. The best way to detect an allergy, even if you can’t prevent it, is to wait until a baby is close to six months before introducing solid foods, and then introduce foods slowly. Wait four days between new foods to see if there is a reaction before trying a new one.

Also, items such as shellfish, chocolate and nuts should probably wait until baby is closer to a year old. The same is true for honey. Honey may not cause an allergy, but it contains Clostridium botulinum which can cause a kind of poisoning the baby’s intestinal tract is not mature enough to fight off.

Air Allergies

Babies can suffer from hay fever and airborne allergies the same way the rest of us do. A trip to the pediatrician can help find the treatment or medicine you need for baby’s seasonal allergies.

Any woman who’s become a mother has daydreamed at least once of trying motherhood out in the celebrity style. How much easier would it be to lose those stubborn pounds if you had a personal trainer and dietician standing by?

The thought of a nanny or “manny” standing by to relieve you of a fussy baby is a dream, and how do celebrity moms always manage to look so pulled together while you barely manage to find a semi-clean pair of sweats to wear every day? Celebrity style mothering has its perks, but definitely has some drawbacks, too.

We all need to maintain a healthy diet and get plenty of exercise. In fact, one of the most critical times for good nutrition and a healthy amount of exercise is immediately following delivery. Your body is trying to get itself back to something resembling normal, and you may be nursing and need to provide the best for your baby.

Celebrity moms have it a bit easier than the rest of us on the diet front. They are able to afford personal trainers and nutritionists to help whip them back into shape. It’s always inspiring to hear how hard a particular celebrity is working to lose the weight they gained, and it does make us a little less jealous to hear of three hour work outs and highly restricted diets when we see how great a new mom looks on the red carpet.

Not only do celebrity moms need hours in the gym to recover as quickly as they do, they need childcare while they work out. The daycare down the street simply won’t do for a high profile baby, so nannies and the male version, mannies, are probably more a necessity than a luxury. Most of these celebs are famous for a reason, and to maintain their careers, they must work like the rest of us. Their childcare options are just slimmer than ours.

Of course, as much as we want to lose the weight and get back into tip-top shape, nobody is forcing us to. It doesn’t matter too much if you wander down the street in your pajama pants, but if our favorite celeb made that fashion choice, the world would know almost instantly. Pictures taken in your house probably lean toward a slightly younger (and possibly cuter) subject matter, and millions of people aren’t shocked or amazed by how much weight you gained or lost.

Your battle is more personal not with the paparazzi, which means you may have to fight it on a more personal level. Just be grateful you’re not recovering in the public’s eye.