Hochdorf Inside

Interview with Christine Geiser, mother and father advisory Service Seetal

Written by Janny Vedder | May 18, 2018 9:29:53 AM
Christine Geiser is a qualified paediatric nurse. She completed her training at Lucerne Children’s Hospital in 1989 and later worked for several years at the Aarau Children’s Hospital and in the postnatal department at Muri District Hospital. She has worked in the advisory service for mothers in Seetal since 1994 and completed post-graduate studies in this area in 2010.
How long have you worked with the Mother and Fa­ther Ad­vi­sory Ser­vice in Hochdorf?

Chris­tine Geiser: I have worked here for 20 years and am re­spon­si­ble for the en­tire Hochdorf re­gion for pre-school chil­dren. We offer ­advice to an av­er­age of 1,500 peo­ple each year in ­person or by tele­phone or e-mail.

Ac­cord­ing to the ex­perts, there has been a dra­matic in­crease in al­ler­gic dis­eases over the past 20 years. Have you ob­served this?

Chris­tine Geiser: I have not per­son­ally found any in­crease. I would es­ti­mate that around five per cent of all the chil­dren we care for will suf­fer from al­ler­gies.

How can you pre­dict if a child is likely to suf­fer from al­ler­gies?

Chris­tine Geiser: We are the only peo­ple in­volved with three quar­ters of all the chil­dren until they reach the age of one so we often see the ini­tial signs of pos­si­ble al­ler­gies. Typ­i­cal signs are red cheeks or a rash in the back of the knee or the crook of the arm.

What hap­pens with typ­i­cal al­lergy symp­toms?

Chris­tine Geiser: The symp­toms will re­main for a third of chil­dren. They dis­ap­pear per­ma­nently for ­another third and re­oc­cur later for the re­main­der. How­ever, I don’t have any of­fi­cial fig­ures for this.

Is al­lergy pre­ven­tion a rea­son­able pre­cau­tion when it comes to in­fants?

Chris­tine Geiser: If the clos­est rel­a­tives – mother, fa­ther, or sib­lings – suf­fer from atopic al­ler­gies, then pre­ven­tion makes sense. 

What do you ad­vise these par­ents?

Chris­tine Geiser: In cases like this, I ad­vise breast­feed­ing ex­clu­sively. If breast­feed­ing is not pos­si­ble I rec­om­mend using HA in­fant for­mula for the first four to six months. The par­ents can then move on to nor­mal for­mula al­though many par­ents de­cide to stick with an HA fol­low-on for­mula.

What is your ex­pe­ri­ence with HA for­mula?

Chris­tine Geiser: We have had very good re­sults with HA in­fant for­mula. The in­fants tol­er­ate HA for­mula very well and ac­cept it eas­ily. 

There are sev­eral HA in­fant for­mula prod­ucts on the mar­ket. Which do you rec­om­mend?

Chris­tine Geiser: As a neu­tral spe­cial­ist de­part­ment we don’t rec­om­mend any par­tic­u­lar brand. How­ever, many par­ents ask about Swiss prod­ucts and we would then rec­om­mend rel­e­vant brands.

Chris­tine Geiser, thank you for the in­ter­est­ing in­ter­view.

Fur­ther In­for­ma­tion
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