You now have a mobile baby and it's hard to keep her away from germs. She is no longer content to just sit in her car seat and it would be unnatural and cruel to force her to do so.

It's too easy to pick up bugs on airplanes. So many people crammed in together. You can wipe down every surface in view but it would be impossible to sheild her from everything. Every time you touch a seat back or open the lav door, you are touching surfaces that others have just touched and touch is the best route of transmission.

I was so upset when I had my first baby and went back to work. Because of my funky Flight Attendant schedule, he had to go to two different daycares. Talk about picking up every bug doing the rounds! I thought it would kill him. He was constantly sick. Yes, he was breastfed, even after my return to work. I'd take off my uniform and make sure he didn't have contact with any of my flight stuff but I couldn't keep him from the contact with all those other children.

My nurse mom got on the bandwagon and sent me all sorts of articles on how getting sick a lot doesn't do any long-term damage to children, how daycares can cause kids to get sick but that long term, they're okay, etc. The other moms too would chuckle and tell me "Either now or when they start school..."

Even with a healthy immune system, if she is exposed to something that she doesn't have immunities too, it's hard for her system to entirely fight it off. While my son was often sick, he was never very sick. No hospital stays. I did ask the ped to do some blood work and all it rendered was a slight iron deficiency. We never had any scary moments. It became more of a headache, than a real health issue.

Only rarely did I get what he had and it usually showed up much differently (still the case), either worse or better, often with slightly different symptoms. Remember too, working on airplanes, I can't say for certain that I didn't pick stuff up there. Honestly, I may have called in sick once with something he gave me but it certainly didn't affect my job. Remember too, Flight Attendants cannot go to work with runny noses and red eyes. It's not like a desk job where you can hole yourself in your cubicle with a box of tissues (wish I could have sometimes!)

Something like 20% of passengers get sick in the two weeks after flying. No way am I going to back up that fact but I've heard it several times and my mom's boss (a generalist) concurs. He's bilingual and has a lot of immigrant patients who travel long haul a lot. He tells me he sees a lot of sick people in his office after their adventures.

Airplanes are basically just germ nests. I got sick a lot when I first got the job and took care to not touch my face until I had washed my hands (easier said than done when you have an itch!) But I spent 13 years on them and lived to tell the tale...

It did taper off and get better with my son. He's now almost 10 and has never had any health concerns or growth issues. He doesn't get sick any more often than the other children in his class.

What I will warn you about is now that she's getting bigger, she's soon going to be less "transportable". Just another reality of parenting and travel. So between concerns about sickness, she will soon be jumping out of strollers and running wherever... I have no idea how your work is organized but you may want to look into other arrangements for her later on. There are plenty of solutions but some need to be signed up and budgeted ahead of time.

Good luck!