CF Parenting IRL: Assessing the risks - Flowers and houseplants

One of the things I found (and still find) challenging is getting to grips with the lists of “do’s”, “don’ts” and “maybe’s” when you have a baby with CF.

There’s so many things around the house and in day to day life with a baby that we have to approach a little differently or be a bit more careful of. 🙏

It doesn’t stop us - after all our main goal is to make sure that CF does not define our little ones or stop them from doing the things that they want to do. But we just have to manage some of the risks.

As I was given flowers this week I thought I’d cover off one of the ‘normal’ things that you might have in a family home that we have to think about when living with a person with CF.

And that is that you have to be very careful with flowers and potted plants in the house.

This is because any situation involving stagnant water is a breeding ground for bacteria - especially the nasty bacteria known as pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Pseudomonas is an opportunistic bacteria - meaning the bacteria only cause infections when a person has CF or another condition that weakens the body's immune system.

Once established in the lungs it’s usually very difficult to eradicate and can cause all sorts of damage/complications.

There’s a ton of ways that pseudomonas can be caught and only some of those are within the realms of our control - the rest is down to luck. But it makes sense to avoid risks where we do have control.

So if you’re given fresh flowers and someone in your household has CF it’s advised to change the water in the vase once a day. Or you might want to just eradicate the risk entirely (which I think we’ll do once Arlo is up and moving) in which case you might want to stick with fake flowers - and you can get some seriously nice ones these days!

When it comes to house plants, there’s less clear-cut guidance on how you can safely have houseplants in the house. And how significant a risk they are. They’re said to be a significant risk to lung transplant patients but there‘s mixed guidance for families with a child with CF in the house. The risk is to do with fungi/mould in the potting soil as well as the possibility of pseudomonas evolving in the wet spots in the bowl. Again I think we’ll probably just remove the risk altogether whilst Arlo is young and does not understand why he must not touch any house plants. You can get air plants that do not require soil and fake ones are definitely 100% safe.

There’s a whole ton of other things that we need to be cautious of when it comes to bugs. I think I might share a few others with you on this page so our friends and family are aware.

🙏☺️💙💐