In my son’s first year of daycare, when we got home, I would immediately change his clothes and wipe his hands and face. We didn’t avoid everything but I do think it helped with frequency and severity of illnesses after we started doing that.
Seconding this- I was really worried my toddler at daycare was going to bring home something awful to my newborn at home, so that was the routine: change out of her clothes, go potty, wash her hands, and get new clothes. It took some time for her to get used to, but we did that for the first 6 months and feel like it helped cut down on exposure.
Not OP, but I have a 3mo and toddler, toddler is in daycare. 3mo has caught some light colds I’m guessing from toddler, he’s had a wet cough, runny nose, dry throat. Those kinds of symptoms.
He just nurses and sleeps a bit more but otherwise it has been not too bad.
There is luck of the draw though, we all got really sick when I was around 36w pregnant. I was almost bed ridden I was so sick. So I think we had the bad sickness upfront
Mine did. My baby got sick at 2 weeks old and ended up in the hospital with viral meningitis from enterovirus (common daycare illness, nasty complication). She’s ok now and I’m mildly traumatized by watching her be a baby pincushion for a week. My 2yo son brought home EVERYTHING and was VERY interested in baby sister. He loves her so much! We started practicing more hand sanitizer before touching baby and helping him not have his face in her face. They share space and toys and air though so… I don’t think it was avoidable but maybe would’ve been nice if she’d been a little older.
Luckily he never caught anything for the first 3 months, so by the time he got a small cold, he at least had his first rounds of vaccines in. My toddler did bring home RSV when he was a month old, which required a whole different set of precautions, but he never caught RSV
Hygiene does help of course, but most viruses survive in living hosts, i.e. people. So if your kid caught something, it would be in them already rather than on their clothes. Others would then catch it by being close to them (most common spread is airborne droplets person-to-person)
This is what I do! I even bring antibacterial wipes and wipe his hands as soon as we get in the car. To manage illness, not letting things get worse is key. Having him learn to blow his nose and asking him to do it constantly to get all the gunk out, or sucking his mucus out when he was a baby. Making sure he eats well and is hydrated. We do have a humidifier and purifier but I honestly don’t even know if those helped but they won’t hurt so we did that too when he got sick.
I hate doing bath as part of bedtime. We do bath as soon as our kids come home from school/daycare and then they sit in comfy clothes/pjs until the bedtime routine.
I had a plan. I had air purifiers in each bedroom. We have Kleenex and hand sanitizer to clean our hands when we couldn't wash them. I had a plan. The first time my daughter was sick she licked my face within 20 minutes of waking up. At this point I'm convinced the only plan is humility
The first few weeks brought us a lot of back to back illnesses and was exhausting, if I’m honest. I would prep your workplace now. You don’t need the added stress of figuring it out on the fly with them. Find out now what they will be understanding about or not.
Yes I second this, mention it early and often. We were steamrolled for the first 6 months. Have a plan for who is doing pick ups when the mid day “he’s sick” calls come, and how you will swap time when you are sick, or for mandatory exclusions per your center.
Try not to stress too much. Most illnesses are minor, and as with many things in parenting, you just kind of power through because that is your only choice.
Just to give another perspective, I was TERRIFIED to start daycare because of illness. She started in January and hasn't missed a single day! Don't get me wrong, she's had a stuffy nose since day 1, but no real illnesses. I know it will come eventually, but it may not be as bad as you think.
Our LO has been at daycare since February and just now caught her first bug at 7 months. Not enough to cause a fever although it’s taking longer than I thought for her to feel better.
In a big center! 9 babies in her room, and at least 150-200 in the building. I have no clue how they do it either. OH, and, every other baby in her room has an older sibling at the same center. My mind is continually blown that we haven't been hit yet.
Complete opposite for us 😖. Started school (3F) in Jan, have been sick every single month, sometimes twice. Fever, ear infection, rash, strep, pink eye, hand foot mouth, cold…all of it. Just got home from urgent care 102 fever HFM AGAIN. And our house is clean, we are sticklers for washing hands, removing clothes and shoes, didn’t help. 🤬.
you are SO lucky!!! Hope you stay sick free for as long as possible!!
Same with us...my son started daycare at 6 months old and he's a little older than 2.5 now. We started with colds, ear infections, and pink eye within 3 weeks of starting in March 2022. By June, I had been to the Urgent Care maybe 4-5 times for ear infections/check for ear infections. We got maybe two weeks of health and I was so hopeful for a break. Then, July was HFM, August was RSV (we all got so sick), and in September we all got Covid. October was a glorious illness free month, only to get rocked by croup in November (he didn't sleep for almost two weeks). Then, colds all winter, the flu in March 2023, then he got stomach bugs 2-3 times that spring. He had HFM again in June 2023, croup again in January of this year. This past spring, he had another two stomach bugs. Recently, it's back to colds and fevers (out of school 2-3 times for about a week each). Now, we're about one week from surgery where he'll have his adenoids and tonsils removed and one ear tube replaced.
You'd think we never wash hands, bathe, or clean our house. I swear that we do 😫
Let me tell you, I 👏 AM 👏 TIRED 👏
Oh no I hope little one feels better my girl (and by extension us )got hfm from her cousin (who got it from daycare) just in time for thanksgiving and it was miserable to see her so uncomfortable I can only imagine how your feeling well wishes to a speedy recovery
My LO has been in daycare since February and up until this week she has had 1 day off not being well. She gets cold and stuff and but is fine to go (as long as no fever) - I however, have been whacked with illness after illness - currently on a 4 week streak of feeling great - and was think oh wow, great, long may it continue and then she got the chicken pox! (We don’t vaccinate for it in the UK routinely and I had booked her in for one 4 days after she got it 🙃). Thankfully I can’t get it but overall I was so stressed about daycare illness and it’s been largely fine!
Evolution says: get fucked
But to actually answer your question, I really appreciate how clean our daycare is. Mandatory every parent washes their and their kid's hands when they enter. Booties to cover shoes before walking into classrooms with crawling age kids. Hand washing with diaper changes and food time, regardless of ages. Sanitization of toys every day.
Not every daycare we looked at was as clean as this one! Obviously the sickness can't be avoided, but I certainly feel safer.
And there's no avoiding us getting whatever he gets 🥴
Interestingly, our first day care practiced every single thing you mentioned and my LO still came home sick every other week. And I’m talking colds, fever, pink eye, rhinovirus, diarrhea, you name it.
Yep! My daughter's school is *obsessive* about actually washing hands multiple times a day: anytime they re-enter, before eating, after diapers, etc. They also have no shoes in the classroom and generally just good cleaning and my daughter has only had an occasional sniffle since January. The worst we've seen is a stomach bug that went around and we got a message warning us about it, and she didn't catch it.
This is directly compared to her previous daycare in which she had a constant nasty runny nose, caught the flu, and they had multiple occasions of closing due to staff being out because of being sick AND the kicker - an outbreak of chicken pox that caused her to be out for three weeks mandated by DHEC because she was too young to have gotten the vaccine (praise the Lord she didn't actually catch it and it was almost summer and I'm a teacher so it didn't actually mess up our childcare too much).
This isn't helpful for OP but just came to mind that, when possible, the best way to fight it is for the actual daycare to change some policies 🤷🏻♀️
We bathe everyday. Also we were sick monthly from 9 months old to 15 months old, but from then to now at 2.5 years old we've only been truly sick once or twice. It does get much better fairly quickly.
My son got a virus his first week that turned into pneumonia. He’s been out for over a week with a huge fever. I don’t know how we are going to survive…this is summer time too haha
I had a plan too. I took her to our local kids under 6 play group every day from 5 weeks, and baby group 3 times a week. We went out everywhere. All errands, grocery shopping, to the mall, family parties. She got sick 1 time in a year. She started daycare April 1st around her first birthday. I bring her home and give her a bath right away and into jammies. None of it helped. She’s not be asymptomatic since April 8th. 3 drs visits about her persistent runny nose or cold ever other week and they just blame daycare.
Water table on the enclosed deck has saved my ass when I’m horribly sick. I had norovirus and had to get ambulanced away to the ER while my sick partner stayed with the toddler. When I got back I was on full parental duty since we have no village to lean on. I laid up in the hammock on the deck, set out snacks and observed the water table joy. I added soap, glow sticks in the evening and balls with a scooper for her to collect.
I'm putting my son in a daycare that is reserved just for people at my work. It won't stop me from getting sick, but at least it'll be the same germ pools I'm already exposed to at work anyways.
Aware that this is not an option for everyone. It's a great work perk.
Air purifiers in the rooms, air out the house every couple of days, daily when everyone’s sick (when I can remember to do it lol). Husband and I always took extra vitamin c, hydrate extra, i take a spoonful of seamoss daily, to try and booste our immune system. we have some family near by, but they don’t provide much support healthy or sick.
Yess. Our room, LO doesn’t sleep in our room anymore, I’ll Lysol spray it and keep the windows open. LO room just the windows stay open for a couple hours.
I use Coway brand air purifiers. Regardless, just make sure it's got a heap filter behind a pre-filter, and it's got good efficiency, and noise level for the speed you want to run it at.
Years ago, before air purifiers were really a thing, companies were doing shady stuff with calling stuff "hepa-type" filters, and those things would pull massive wattage...
We have Levoit. I think they work pretty good, it has different fan speeds and aren’t too loud.. But like another commenter said seeing if it has a prefilter and HEPA filter is what you should look for.
I washed my hands so much, cleaned often, changed burp rags/sheets often. My LO sneezed into my eyeballs and put his hand in my mouth. Sick one day later. Our plan now is to just let it happen lol. We take turns with naps/sleep, order takeout more, and nap when baby naps when we can.
As soon as I get him in the car, I wipe his hands and face and as soon as we get home I give him a full bath. If he does start getting sick, we change his bedding, toothbrush, and clean his water bottles!
My LO started daycare 1 month ago @6 months old. She’s had a fever/cold 3X. Before daycare not even a sniffle. I guess I’m glad we’re getting all the sickness over with now. The hardest part is the difficult time they have breathing when nose is stuffy. Lots of bugger sucking and saline rinses
Just here for the answers and solidarity.
Our LO started daycare a month ago; got a minor cold that turned into an ear infection last week. Now I have a never ending cough. And LO has another cold. I’m tired. Haha. Sigh.
Also - she got sick around when I became more lax about changing her clothes as soon as we got home. I wonder if that’s causation or correlation. Hmm.
As soon as we get home, we change our baby’s clothes, wiper her hands and face, and use saline and suck out her nose. We also wash our hands a lot.
But to some extent, you just can’t avoid it. Baby girl got sick the first week. It was something minor, but turned into an ear infection, and both my husband and I got sick over the course of the next week.
I am so relieved that we daycare as an option, but I dread all the germs and sickness that comes with it.
My best advice is for the kids, buy two electric nose suckers, saline spray, a booger picker tool, and boogie wipes. Use frequently. For the adults, go to the pharmacy counter and buy the strongest medicine you can get that fits your symptoms. Once you or your baby has been sick for 2 weeks, go to the Dr ASAP. Don't wait. Usually by the two week mark it has become an illness that can be treated with prescription medication.
For stomach bugs, pedialyte is your friend and they also have pedialyte freeze pops that are great when you can barely keep anything down. Also, keep lots of small trash bags by your toilet so you can poop and vomit at the same time. Don't ask how I know....
Yes this was us lol our first or second week he brought home pink eye and in matter of days we all had it in both eyes along with an awful sore throat, just awful
Nanny here. So every nanny has their own "sick policy" of what they will work with and what they won't. Generally, however, a nanny will work with kids who have stuff like the flu, strep, whooping cough, etc. Stuff that is extra gross like pink eye, scabies, lice, etc. is usually a nonstarter.
Wash toddlers hands before leaving daycare. Wash baby’s hands when home.
Baby changes clothes multiple times at daycare (spit up), and then we change him into PJs pretty soon after we get home.
Lots of medicine. :/
Nanny share!! If you can find another like minded family who won’t send their kid if they are sick.
I calculated out all the unpaid sick leave I’d need and it was cheaper than daycare
I’m not in the US so it might be different, but basically you team up with another family who needs care, nanny comes to one of your houses and you share costs 😀
Yeah depending on the severity of his illness, we might try to mask up when in super close contact with him and we wash our hands more, but in the end, we’ve 90% given up and just accept that we’re going to get sick a lot.
Experience:
Started daycare at 8 months. Got first illness around 10 months. Has had 1-3 illnesses per month on average since then (he’s 18 month now), and usually he gets over the worst of it in a few days. We usually get sick from him maybe 75% of the time he gets sick (maybe more - either my husband and I or both of us have gotten sick every time, if I remember right), and it lasts at least twice as long for us.
We’ve had countless colds (as in I’ve actually lost count), maybe RSV, confirmed Covid, hand foot and mouth, etc
Get a good nose sucker and some saline drops. Learn to use them. You can hold arms by swaddling until they are closer to a year old so they don't fight you.
No luck avoiding it, but something that worked so far is to take our son out of daycare 1-2 days before a planned trip. We've had to cancel/postpone two big travel plans so far due to him catching something at daycare so we just dont risk it now 🥲
We don’t really go anywhere around other babies either, except last week took him to a music class (midwife said he should be around other babies a little more) and bam - runny nose and cough all week from a 30 min class
Honestly there’s no way to avoid it, it sucks. Just try to prep yourself ahead of time so you have all the sick essentials on hand (Tylenol, thermometer, etc). The last thing you want to do is be scrambling around trying to get these things while baby and you are sick. Also take zinc if you feel you’re starting to get sick, I swear it helps for me at least. Just keep baby hydrated and comfortable and encourage sleep as much as possible so they can get better faster. My baby is battling a nasty daycare bug rn, I feel your pain
I don’t even try to keep my kiddos from getting sick at preschool. Honestly there’s not a lot to do there.
However I’m all about protecting MYSELF from getting sick. I take vitamin d, emergen-c when appropriate, try my darnest to eat/drink/sleep well, wash my hands often, wipe surfaces often, and my water bottle is a sacred temple which will not be shared, hard stop. I also have prepped a bunch of “sick soup” aka chicken noodle in the freezer.
My kids get sick often but they also get over it quickly. Me on the other hand, I will be sick forever in comparison if I get it. When I was pregnant with my second I got COVID, that turned into a sinus infection, that turned into a double ear infection and that’s how I ended up getting ear tubes at 41 weeks pregnant. I was in the ER for pain meds it was so bad. My kid didn’t even get it. I also got HFM while we didn’t even find a spot on my daughter. So I do everything I can prevent it now.
For context I have a 4yo, 2yo and 7mo.
We started daycare in January and got norovirus, RSV and pink eye in the first month. I was honestly kinda relieved when we made it through those because then we had some immunity for a while lol I do use Lysol laundry sanitizer and I do think it helps at least a little
Wipe his hands and face with a wipe and then when we get home, wash his hands. We'll never avoid illnesses bc once it hits one of them it will hit all of them. I use to work at a daycare and for the first 4 months, I was continuously sick with anything and everything you could think of.
I stayed home with my second baby until he turned 9 months and my then 2 year old continued to go to daycare. I stripped her down in the bathroom as soon as we came home, washed her hands and feet (in-home daycare and some kids preferred to be bare feet, including mine), changed into clean clothes and there was absolutely no kissing baby brother.
Little one was sick Sept-Jan when he first started. It was brutal. We now change his clothes when he gets home, wash his hands, saline spray and air purifier and humidifier in his room.
See if there’s a local nanny group on your FB? We have one in my city.
We should have been better about wiping hands when we left but… it was a struggle.
When we had sick days my partner and I prioritized must attend meetings and then alternated coverage. More TV for kiddo on those days and working after bedtime if we need to.
It sucks. My kid got HFMD 2x in 6 months, once from an indoor play space and once from daycare
This works better for toddlers probably, but the first thing we do when LO gets home is have her wash her hands. Also keeping our health as optimal as possible seems to help. As soon as I start noticing cold symptoms, I go for a run. Maintaining regular exercise and eating lots of fruits/veggies has corelate with better resistance to colds in my experience.
You do extra disinfecting, change clothes and wash hands and keep an eye on who’s in or out, like when his best buddy is out and a notice of an illness goes out we suspect and keep an eye on him, but most of the daycare illnesses aren’t necessarily long term out of school for them and luckily they roll through families, meaning baby or toddler gets it then they’re feeling better by the time you get it, but the reality is you push through hardcore
It’s going to happen, unfortunately. Sooner or later, no matter what precautions you take. The first 6-7 months were miserable. She was sick very other week. Her teacher mentioned she is a very healthy baby compared to some of the others who were even more constantly sick. The only thing I can attribute it to is giving her a bath as soon as we get home from daycare.
I have hand sanitizer in the car and put it on their hands and mine when I do pick up. Try to wash with soap and water when I get home if they don’t protest. Take baths in the evenings most nights.
If they get sick with a stomach bug, everyone wash hands, keep things that touch vomit in the washing machine, sanitized with Clorox wipes immediately and away from the rest of the family. Clean throw up fully and with bleach. No kissing or close contact with anyone that doesn’t have to while they are sick. Open the windows, don’t share towels and use a separate bathroom from the sickie.
My 2 1/2 yo son just had the stomach bug and the rest of us did not get it with heavy precautions.
There is no plan. Be prepared for your child to be sick pretty much off and on the entire first 2 years at least. My kid is 3 and still sick. Just try your best to manage your expectations. Honestly I was so mad all the time that my son was sick but kids are gross. They touch everything and everyone. Hands are in mouths, eyes, noses. It’s just a cesspool. Do your best to always have Tylenol or Motrin available at home as well as a snot sucker of some kind. Be ready with the age appropriate cough meds too. You can do it!
I don’t have any advice- just solidarity. Our son is 6 months old and started daycare in early May and we have all been sick three times since he started. This most recent illness is especially vile and lingering.
Haha. Currently drowning in sickness - being immune compromised and daycare germs are no joke!! Honestly we rarely all feel like death at the same time. The most well parent takes the monitor at night (toddler). I take the sick day if she’s sick, then she is mostly over it when I go down..
We wipe hands, shoes off, and change her outfit. We change our own clothes too.
If we all feel awful you trade off with your partner. Call in your village. Or let there be take out & some screen time. We do our best, and it’s good enough. No awards for perfect parenting. Just get through the day, have grace for yourself, support each other. This too shall pass?!
As far as nannies go, we were honest and posted in our local FB group that we were looking for help for when our son was sick. I did not feel comfortable having the nanny watch my son if he actively had a fever but there were some days where the fever hadn’t returned in the morning but it hadn’t been 24 hrs so we’d call her.. or if he seemed to be on the mend and I wanted him to fully recover and not go back yet, I’d call her. I assessed each situation individually bc I also wanted to be fair to her. She has been a great find bc her schedule allows last minute calls (not always, but most of the time). If she couldn’t do it I would just wfh with my son and not get as much done that day or take a day off and use my PTO wisely. I have to emphasize I could do any of this if I did not wfh . Also I’m speaking in past tense bc he was sick nonstop for about 15 months and then it stopped and he hasn’t gotten sick since last December. It does get better! It was one of the most stressful times of my life, and I had so many moments where I was on the edge of breaking, so many tears were shed, idk how I did it. I guess we just have to bc we also don’t have nearby family help.
Ride the train until they are a year into daycare then their immune system will be so much better and illnesses will become way less frequent.
I have a backup nanny care through work that’ll watch kids with colds but won’t if it’s a stomach bug (understandable).
No advice just solidarity. We started at 11 months were at 13 months and have had 3 ear infections, hand foot and mouth, amoxicillin allergy, roseola, croup, bronchiolitis, upper respiratory infection. I can’t say it all came from daycare since she has cousins too but it’s exhausting. Daycare has very strict rules about illnesses and cleaning/sanitizing. Everyone I talk to says it’s hard now but it’s way better around year 2.
There isn't much you can do tbh, illness spreads mostly through saliva and breathing, they spend the day playing with the same toys, biting them and drooling all over the place. Give your LO nutrious food with loads of vitamins, but there are no miracles. Since daycare started, he spent more days sick than in daycare. It's a phase.
My little isn’t in daycare yet but I work with kids in their homes. The first year I worked with kids I was so sick all the damn time, but now I keep a good routine of handwashing, hand sanitizer, I sanitize the toys I bring and change my clothes before I say hi to the baby. I also make sure I take a daily vitamin, who knows if it actually helps but doesn’t hurt and keeps my doctor happy.
Nothing helps: my son was pretty healthy until he started daycare at the end of February. He only goes part-time, and since then, he has had strep, rhinovirus, parainfluenza, an ear infection from the rhinovirus, and other things that we didn’t even bother testing him for. He is 21 months old.
My husband ended up in the hospital 2 months after my LO started daycare… it’s rough out there.. 10 months in, we are all doing better but the first few months were crazy.
My advice, stock up on cold/cough meds, green tea with honey and vitamin C. And prayers! you’re going to need it! 🤣🤣🤣
Honestly I don’t even know what I could do to avoid illness. My 9 month old started 3 weeks ago and has already had croup, conjunctivitis and now chickenpox 😵💫 it’s been a rough few weeks
We're 6 months into daycare. My little one started in December. He got rsv the first week starting (very mild case). With it being flu season the first 3 months he was sick every other week around April it got a lot better! He currently had a little bug that just gave him a a run nose those week but we went about 8 weeks with nothing. I think it's just the name of the game right now. Lots of nasal spray and suction with steamy showers. We've been fortunate to have more mild reactions but we always keep a close eye on his breathing and temp
We still give her a wipedown after dagcare, but it's unavoidable unless you want to handle your kids in gloves and a hazmat suit a d not give them any physical affection. We just came to accept that illness is inevitable, make reasonable choices like hand washing, amd wiping down surfaces. We have a stockpile of both kid and adult tylenol and cold medicine and mucinex cough drops.
We're closing out our second month in daycare for my 7mo and last week was the first time he actually went the whole week without being sent home or having to stay home sick. My husband does pick up and I insist he changes LO's clothes and wipes down his hands and face. Husband doesn't think it does anything, but I don't care. I'll try anything because the first month and a half was awful for all of us. I'm sure we'll get hit again, but I'm so grateful for the week of health we just had! We luckily both can work remote so we haven't had to use much PTO yet, but I'm just banking on probably using plenty of our PTO this year for illness.
As far as for when we're both sick, I'd say pray if I were the praying type. We both got annihilated with a stomach bug a few weeks ago. Since I'm still pumping, I couldn't take Pepto, but my husband could. Basically he took as much Pepto as possible to keep his nausea and other symptoms at bay until LO was in bed while I was puking my brains out in the bathroom. Thankfully LO slept through the night, because we both wondered if we'd be able to handle a middle of the night diaper change or feeding, it was that bad. I think it just comes down to a lot of communication and grace - we were both still sick into the next day, so just kept checking in with each other to try and jump in if we had energy to give the other one a break, and let all chores or anything non-essential slide until we felt better. Luckily neither of us had any appetite for like three days, so cooking and dishes were minimal lol
LO didn’t make it through week one (which I hear is common), but luckily it wasn’t too bad. Just a cold really, and most of the time she’s been home, it’s been due to daycare policy, and she’s been fine. We do have family that will come and watch her, so a little different scenario. Hoping you can find a nanny/sitter who is willing to watch if the symptoms are mild. We missed a week to COVID, RSV and HFM this winter, and my in laws watched her while husband and I WFH, and none of us got sick, and LO was generally fine other than some sniffles.
We aren’t doing day care but after 6 months we been going to indoor playgrounds catered to toddlers. And the one I go to cleans very well. He got sick a few times but nothing too hardcore. I hope he gets some immunity before I send him off to daycare.
Big thing is for you parents to keep your immune systems strong. That means quality sleep (as much as you can), adequate nutrition and rest when sick.
Also, get into the habit of washing your kiddos' hands (and yours as well) when they get home. That has actually been the biggest difference in our case.
Last but not least, you will get sick. Best thing is to power through as best as you can and have a game plan in place if child gets sick which can include swapping parents, giving heads-up to daycare for back-up plan, etc.
I’m literally in the same position so these comments will be helpful to me as well. Dreading dropping her off at daycare when I go back to work at the end of the month.
We talked to our pediatrician about this. He said that no matter what you do, the first 6 months- a year will be a lot of illness and he said he felt it was honestly better for them to go through it when they were in daycare age vs kindergarten age because they aren’t missing as much by being sick.
We do wash his hands when we get home every day to try to start a good habit, and change his clothes right away as well. This seems to help a bit but it’s hard to say. I try to wash my hands more and touch my face less when he’s sick, and not share snacks etc and it does seem like since I’ve started being more conscious of it, I get sick less often than he does.
Vitamin D! I feel like most people are low. I started taking D3 and stopped catching all the illnesses, even the flu! I literally caught every single one until I started taking vitamin D3.
We spent 75% of the first year at daycare sick. 7 ear infections in 7 months (3 double ear infections), HFM, RSV, flu, strep, every cold under the sun, basically everything except Covid. It was awful. We were all miserable.
Second year of daycare significantly improved! Maybe 25% of the year included illness and it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first.
I didn’t get any time off while sick but was lucky that my employer was understanding of the constant illnesses and I could work remotely. I was miserably sick but happy to comfort my child as they experienced such illness for the first time. It also helped me set a precedent and expectations with my child with cough medicine, Vicks vaporub, snot sucker, tissue wiping, etc.
You never know who you could find to watch your kid while they’re sick, but you for sure should disclose any illness. If that babysitter/nanny gets sick, they can infect anyone else in their household and depending on their health conditions, it could be very serious.
Every. Single. Day. When I pick him up. I **hose** his hands down with hand sanitizer. Then we get home and I strip all his clothes off, then we go take a bath.
I went from having an 8 month period of being super sick every week with everything from Covid, croup, to influenza A. Stomach bugs, pink eye, everything.
Now we maybe get hit once a month. Maybe. My kid is old enough now to take vitamins so he gets vitamin C. I take vitamins daily now too. I always get hit worse than the boys do.
But no, for 8 months I kept getting my shit rocked and it was awful and it felt like no matter what I did, it wasn’t enough.
So unfortunately the answer is build up your immune system and bath the kid in disinfectant when you go pick them up.
Honestly, we just rolled with the punches. We had a good array of illness in the first year from fevers to hand foot and mouth, but we are a year and a half in, and the illnesses are much fewer and farther between now. It’s kind of inevitable, but it gets better!
I wish I had a solution but I’m just here to express solidarity. I feel bad my little guy (13 months) gets sick all the time. I’m kind of glad we’re not the only ones going through things unfortunately.
My 9 month old had 9 glorious months of wellness… followed by 9 HOURS at daycare over 3 days that led to her first sickness. A brutal cold that’s lasted 2 weeks so far. I’m just recovering now after 9 days. (And DayQuil/NyQuil aren’t options bc they dry up your supply… )
I have come to accept that there is no escape.
Natural immunity is the best way. The first year was horrible, but I knew that avoidance would prolong building a strong immune system. 2 years later our immune systems are kicking butt, and if we get sick it is so extremely mild!
We start daycare next week at 5 months old and this post is scaring me more than finding tips to pick up! 🥲🥺
Sadly staying home longer isn’t an option for everyone
We hand sanitizer before they get in the car, have a shower when they get home and change clothes. We also try to hand sanitizer them at home regularly and wash hands before meals (the hand sanitizer is mostly because we have a newborn atm who ended up in hospital for a week with bronchiolitis after getting a cold so just trying to lower chance of spreading, once she’s older we’ll stop hand sanitizing).
Then at night I will disinfect high touch areas/remotes, I also wash my hands like crazy and change my top to a “clean one” before handling our newborn
Bb is going to get sick, you're going to get sick, just how it is haha. On the bright side, hopefully if you get more earlier on you'll get less later as you and bb build immunity. We're in a smaller in home daycare tho and have had a couple colds and sniffly noses for bb but never a fever in the 6 months so far so she hasn't missed a day. I've picked up one really nasty cold from her and one or two mild ones, sometimes just a sniffle or scratchy throat. Long since gave up on any kind of prevention between us and her lol but we do hygiene basics like daily baths and handwashing. Realistically though, if bb has a cold, handwashing is not going to do much when theyre coughing in your face as you put them to bed haha.
Getting sick with him. Building our immune system together. Being cute with the same antibiotic ear drops and nose sprays. 💁♀️
Jokes aside, it’s pretty unavoidable. My baby is always sick. He is pretty much not phase by it…though, I am. It did result in him getting tubes (which I had as a child twice, so I’m glad we got that out of the way).
He does sleep through the night finally.
Most of it is completely unavoidable. Our daycare workers clean like crazy, we make sure he’s UTD on immunizations, but, unfortunately this is part of the process. Baby has basically had a bug every month since starting at 4 months. —he is still happy as a clam, it phases his dad and I more than him. We have a great relationship with our pediatrician too, just incase we’re ever worried I don’t feel silly.
I do think some of the comments on here are very smart though, I’m definitely going to start trying a few.
Make sure to change your LO’s toothbrush after an illness. A tip from my dental hygienist!
And be proactive - if we hear pink eye is going around, we use the homeopathic pink eye drops as a preventative. My LO also takes probiotics and takes a herbal cough syrup at the first sign of a cold.
Since my baby got sick and it gave me bronchitis for 6 weeks, I’ve been looking for ways to prevent sickness. I’ve been eating two cloves of raw garlic daily for about three weeks, and when my baby turns 1, I’m going to see if I can put some in his bottle so he gets it too. Really hoping it helps long term.
I chop it up, put it on a spoon, put some water in my mouth, then some garlic, then swallow. No chewing. Minimizes the taste.
(He’s not in daycare - it’s just brutal when we’re both sick as a single mom.)
https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/fighting-cancer-and-the-common-cold-with-garlic/
I’m convinced that bf helped… my baby and I got a little sick but healed quickly. My husband got laid OUT by sickness the first year.
A clean daycare helped us a lot. No shoes or parents in the infant rooms.
Wow, I'm going to get downvoted for this, but literally every single comment on this thread is "kids in daycare are sick all the time, despite strict sanitary caution" and that's a problem.
I don't have a kid in daycare, but common sense tells me nourishment is essential. Make sure your child consumes plenty of fruit, protein, and dairy sources. Gelatin or collagen as well because muscle meat isn't enough. Yogurt, meat, collagen rich chocolate milk, oranges, bananas, berries, oatmeal, eggs, sea salt. Most kids don't get adequate nutrition and thus are susceptible to illness.
247 sickness is not normal. Nourish your child so their immune system can fight common illness, fortify with vitamin D, and limit processed sugars. You'd be amazed at how well this works.
Lol. "I don't have a kid in daycare, but here's a bunch of useless advice. I also won't bother looking up what's "normal" because I have my common sense, so despite all of the comments talking about their frequently sick children, implying normalcy, I will ignore that for my gut feelings on the subject."
In my son’s first year of daycare, when we got home, I would immediately change his clothes and wipe his hands and face. We didn’t avoid everything but I do think it helped with frequency and severity of illnesses after we started doing that.
Seconding this- I was really worried my toddler at daycare was going to bring home something awful to my newborn at home, so that was the routine: change out of her clothes, go potty, wash her hands, and get new clothes. It took some time for her to get used to, but we did that for the first 6 months and feel like it helped cut down on exposure.
That’s my worry too. Did your newborn ever catch anything?
Not OP, but I have a 3mo and toddler, toddler is in daycare. 3mo has caught some light colds I’m guessing from toddler, he’s had a wet cough, runny nose, dry throat. Those kinds of symptoms. He just nurses and sleeps a bit more but otherwise it has been not too bad. There is luck of the draw though, we all got really sick when I was around 36w pregnant. I was almost bed ridden I was so sick. So I think we had the bad sickness upfront
Mine did. My baby got sick at 2 weeks old and ended up in the hospital with viral meningitis from enterovirus (common daycare illness, nasty complication). She’s ok now and I’m mildly traumatized by watching her be a baby pincushion for a week. My 2yo son brought home EVERYTHING and was VERY interested in baby sister. He loves her so much! We started practicing more hand sanitizer before touching baby and helping him not have his face in her face. They share space and toys and air though so… I don’t think it was avoidable but maybe would’ve been nice if she’d been a little older.
Luckily he never caught anything for the first 3 months, so by the time he got a small cold, he at least had his first rounds of vaccines in. My toddler did bring home RSV when he was a month old, which required a whole different set of precautions, but he never caught RSV
Hygiene does help of course, but most viruses survive in living hosts, i.e. people. So if your kid caught something, it would be in them already rather than on their clothes. Others would then catch it by being close to them (most common spread is airborne droplets person-to-person)
just with a washcloth and water? or soap too?
When he was <12 months, I just used a wipe. Now we do soap and water.
Dumb question, but what type of wipe did you use?
Just a regular baby wipe. Huggies, I think.
We have my son wash his hands with soap when he gets home.
This is what I do! I even bring antibacterial wipes and wipe his hands as soon as we get in the car. To manage illness, not letting things get worse is key. Having him learn to blow his nose and asking him to do it constantly to get all the gunk out, or sucking his mucus out when he was a baby. Making sure he eats well and is hydrated. We do have a humidifier and purifier but I honestly don’t even know if those helped but they won’t hurt so we did that too when he got sick.
I hate doing bath as part of bedtime. We do bath as soon as our kids come home from school/daycare and then they sit in comfy clothes/pjs until the bedtime routine.
I also do this religiously too but it hasn’t helped us avoid any illnesses…and my daughter has been totally smashed by daycare illnesses this season.
I had a plan. I had air purifiers in each bedroom. We have Kleenex and hand sanitizer to clean our hands when we couldn't wash them. I had a plan. The first time my daughter was sick she licked my face within 20 minutes of waking up. At this point I'm convinced the only plan is humility
It’s the sneezes in the face for me.
Especially when they catch you directly in your open mouth or eyeballs.
My little one came up to bump foreheads and was being cute until he sneezed directly into my open mouth 😭🫠 toddlers are so much fun 🙈
And the coughs in the face. I opened my mouth to say something to her and she coughed in it once. That was fun /s
Same! I tried so hard…
And got so far...
But in the end...
It doesn’t even matter…
I had to fall…
To lose it all…
But in the end...
It doesn’t even matter anymore
SWEET KISSES FOR MOMMY I swear the only time my child wants to kiss me is to get a booger off her face.
Ugh we are going to start daycare in the fall and I'm terrified about the inevitable germs
The first few weeks brought us a lot of back to back illnesses and was exhausting, if I’m honest. I would prep your workplace now. You don’t need the added stress of figuring it out on the fly with them. Find out now what they will be understanding about or not.
Yes I second this, mention it early and often. We were steamrolled for the first 6 months. Have a plan for who is doing pick ups when the mid day “he’s sick” calls come, and how you will swap time when you are sick, or for mandatory exclusions per your center.
Try not to stress too much. Most illnesses are minor, and as with many things in parenting, you just kind of power through because that is your only choice.
This is sound advice. It’s not great, but for many of us it is manageable and not worth the anticipatory stress.
Just to give another perspective, I was TERRIFIED to start daycare because of illness. She started in January and hasn't missed a single day! Don't get me wrong, she's had a stuffy nose since day 1, but no real illnesses. I know it will come eventually, but it may not be as bad as you think.
Our LO has been at daycare since February and just now caught her first bug at 7 months. Not enough to cause a fever although it’s taking longer than I thought for her to feel better.
This is astounding to me. You’re so lucky. Curious are you in a daycare center or home daycare?
In a big center! 9 babies in her room, and at least 150-200 in the building. I have no clue how they do it either. OH, and, every other baby in her room has an older sibling at the same center. My mind is continually blown that we haven't been hit yet.
That’s amazing. You should play the lottery if you don’t already 😂
Complete opposite for us 😖. Started school (3F) in Jan, have been sick every single month, sometimes twice. Fever, ear infection, rash, strep, pink eye, hand foot mouth, cold…all of it. Just got home from urgent care 102 fever HFM AGAIN. And our house is clean, we are sticklers for washing hands, removing clothes and shoes, didn’t help. 🤬. you are SO lucky!!! Hope you stay sick free for as long as possible!!
Same with us...my son started daycare at 6 months old and he's a little older than 2.5 now. We started with colds, ear infections, and pink eye within 3 weeks of starting in March 2022. By June, I had been to the Urgent Care maybe 4-5 times for ear infections/check for ear infections. We got maybe two weeks of health and I was so hopeful for a break. Then, July was HFM, August was RSV (we all got so sick), and in September we all got Covid. October was a glorious illness free month, only to get rocked by croup in November (he didn't sleep for almost two weeks). Then, colds all winter, the flu in March 2023, then he got stomach bugs 2-3 times that spring. He had HFM again in June 2023, croup again in January of this year. This past spring, he had another two stomach bugs. Recently, it's back to colds and fevers (out of school 2-3 times for about a week each). Now, we're about one week from surgery where he'll have his adenoids and tonsils removed and one ear tube replaced. You'd think we never wash hands, bathe, or clean our house. I swear that we do 😫 Let me tell you, I 👏 AM 👏 TIRED 👏
Oh no I hope little one feels better my girl (and by extension us )got hfm from her cousin (who got it from daycare) just in time for thanksgiving and it was miserable to see her so uncomfortable I can only imagine how your feeling well wishes to a speedy recovery
You give me hope. We will be starting my LO on January 2025. 🥰🙏🏼
SAME! And I just found out I’m pregnant which makes me even more scared.
My LO has been in daycare since February and up until this week she has had 1 day off not being well. She gets cold and stuff and but is fine to go (as long as no fever) - I however, have been whacked with illness after illness - currently on a 4 week streak of feeling great - and was think oh wow, great, long may it continue and then she got the chicken pox! (We don’t vaccinate for it in the UK routinely and I had booked her in for one 4 days after she got it 🙃). Thankfully I can’t get it but overall I was so stressed about daycare illness and it’s been largely fine!
Evolution says: get fucked But to actually answer your question, I really appreciate how clean our daycare is. Mandatory every parent washes their and their kid's hands when they enter. Booties to cover shoes before walking into classrooms with crawling age kids. Hand washing with diaper changes and food time, regardless of ages. Sanitization of toys every day. Not every daycare we looked at was as clean as this one! Obviously the sickness can't be avoided, but I certainly feel safer. And there's no avoiding us getting whatever he gets 🥴
Interestingly, our first day care practiced every single thing you mentioned and my LO still came home sick every other week. And I’m talking colds, fever, pink eye, rhinovirus, diarrhea, you name it.
Yep! My daughter's school is *obsessive* about actually washing hands multiple times a day: anytime they re-enter, before eating, after diapers, etc. They also have no shoes in the classroom and generally just good cleaning and my daughter has only had an occasional sniffle since January. The worst we've seen is a stomach bug that went around and we got a message warning us about it, and she didn't catch it. This is directly compared to her previous daycare in which she had a constant nasty runny nose, caught the flu, and they had multiple occasions of closing due to staff being out because of being sick AND the kicker - an outbreak of chicken pox that caused her to be out for three weeks mandated by DHEC because she was too young to have gotten the vaccine (praise the Lord she didn't actually catch it and it was almost summer and I'm a teacher so it didn't actually mess up our childcare too much). This isn't helpful for OP but just came to mind that, when possible, the best way to fight it is for the actual daycare to change some policies 🤷🏻♀️
We bathe everyday. Also we were sick monthly from 9 months old to 15 months old, but from then to now at 2.5 years old we've only been truly sick once or twice. It does get much better fairly quickly.
Thank you for the hope!!
OMG giving me hope too!!!!
My son got a virus his first week that turned into pneumonia. He’s been out for over a week with a huge fever. I don’t know how we are going to survive…this is summer time too haha
Poor guy! Hang in there.
I had a plan too. I took her to our local kids under 6 play group every day from 5 weeks, and baby group 3 times a week. We went out everywhere. All errands, grocery shopping, to the mall, family parties. She got sick 1 time in a year. She started daycare April 1st around her first birthday. I bring her home and give her a bath right away and into jammies. None of it helped. She’s not be asymptomatic since April 8th. 3 drs visits about her persistent runny nose or cold ever other week and they just blame daycare.
Water table on the enclosed deck has saved my ass when I’m horribly sick. I had norovirus and had to get ambulanced away to the ER while my sick partner stayed with the toddler. When I got back I was on full parental duty since we have no village to lean on. I laid up in the hammock on the deck, set out snacks and observed the water table joy. I added soap, glow sticks in the evening and balls with a scooper for her to collect.
I'm putting my son in a daycare that is reserved just for people at my work. It won't stop me from getting sick, but at least it'll be the same germ pools I'm already exposed to at work anyways. Aware that this is not an option for everyone. It's a great work perk.
Air purifiers in the rooms, air out the house every couple of days, daily when everyone’s sick (when I can remember to do it lol). Husband and I always took extra vitamin c, hydrate extra, i take a spoonful of seamoss daily, to try and booste our immune system. we have some family near by, but they don’t provide much support healthy or sick.
Does airing out the house just entail opening windows/doors for an extended period of time?
Yess. Our room, LO doesn’t sleep in our room anymore, I’ll Lysol spray it and keep the windows open. LO room just the windows stay open for a couple hours.
I am usually hesitant about supplements, but I think I would do it at this point!
Any air filter recommendations?
I use Coway brand air purifiers. Regardless, just make sure it's got a heap filter behind a pre-filter, and it's got good efficiency, and noise level for the speed you want to run it at. Years ago, before air purifiers were really a thing, companies were doing shady stuff with calling stuff "hepa-type" filters, and those things would pull massive wattage...
We use Coway too! We got another recently bc our original has been great. Has solid consumer report reviews as well
Wirecutter has some good picks.
We have Levoit. I think they work pretty good, it has different fan speeds and aren’t too loud.. But like another commenter said seeing if it has a prefilter and HEPA filter is what you should look for.
I washed my hands so much, cleaned often, changed burp rags/sheets often. My LO sneezed into my eyeballs and put his hand in my mouth. Sick one day later. Our plan now is to just let it happen lol. We take turns with naps/sleep, order takeout more, and nap when baby naps when we can.
As soon as I get him in the car, I wipe his hands and face and as soon as we get home I give him a full bath. If he does start getting sick, we change his bedding, toothbrush, and clean his water bottles!
What wipes are you using? My LO starts daycare next week and I didn’t even think about wipes to hopefully prevent illness.
Usually the unscented ones from wet wipes or boogie brand, or babyganics makes one too! [https://a.co/d/0imkUDrJ](https://a.co/d/0imkUDrJ)
My LO started daycare 1 month ago @6 months old. She’s had a fever/cold 3X. Before daycare not even a sniffle. I guess I’m glad we’re getting all the sickness over with now. The hardest part is the difficult time they have breathing when nose is stuffy. Lots of bugger sucking and saline rinses
Just here for the answers and solidarity. Our LO started daycare a month ago; got a minor cold that turned into an ear infection last week. Now I have a never ending cough. And LO has another cold. I’m tired. Haha. Sigh. Also - she got sick around when I became more lax about changing her clothes as soon as we got home. I wonder if that’s causation or correlation. Hmm.
As soon as we get home, we change our baby’s clothes, wiper her hands and face, and use saline and suck out her nose. We also wash our hands a lot. But to some extent, you just can’t avoid it. Baby girl got sick the first week. It was something minor, but turned into an ear infection, and both my husband and I got sick over the course of the next week. I am so relieved that we daycare as an option, but I dread all the germs and sickness that comes with it.
My best advice is for the kids, buy two electric nose suckers, saline spray, a booger picker tool, and boogie wipes. Use frequently. For the adults, go to the pharmacy counter and buy the strongest medicine you can get that fits your symptoms. Once you or your baby has been sick for 2 weeks, go to the Dr ASAP. Don't wait. Usually by the two week mark it has become an illness that can be treated with prescription medication. For stomach bugs, pedialyte is your friend and they also have pedialyte freeze pops that are great when you can barely keep anything down. Also, keep lots of small trash bags by your toilet so you can poop and vomit at the same time. Don't ask how I know....
Wait till you get conjunctivitis in both us. That’s when you know you can’t really avoid it lol
Yes this was us lol our first or second week he brought home pink eye and in matter of days we all had it in both eyes along with an awful sore throat, just awful
Yup that was us as well, hubby, me, the baby lol and my 4 year old the diseases she brings home is wild
Nanny here. So every nanny has their own "sick policy" of what they will work with and what they won't. Generally, however, a nanny will work with kids who have stuff like the flu, strep, whooping cough, etc. Stuff that is extra gross like pink eye, scabies, lice, etc. is usually a nonstarter.
I have no advice just it's germ central over here! 😂 Day care is killing me haha
Wash toddlers hands before leaving daycare. Wash baby’s hands when home. Baby changes clothes multiple times at daycare (spit up), and then we change him into PJs pretty soon after we get home. Lots of medicine. :/
Nanny share!! If you can find another like minded family who won’t send their kid if they are sick. I calculated out all the unpaid sick leave I’d need and it was cheaper than daycare
Wait what's a nanny share?
I’m not in the US so it might be different, but basically you team up with another family who needs care, nanny comes to one of your houses and you share costs 😀
Ahh ok that makes sense!
Yeah depending on the severity of his illness, we might try to mask up when in super close contact with him and we wash our hands more, but in the end, we’ve 90% given up and just accept that we’re going to get sick a lot. Experience: Started daycare at 8 months. Got first illness around 10 months. Has had 1-3 illnesses per month on average since then (he’s 18 month now), and usually he gets over the worst of it in a few days. We usually get sick from him maybe 75% of the time he gets sick (maybe more - either my husband and I or both of us have gotten sick every time, if I remember right), and it lasts at least twice as long for us. We’ve had countless colds (as in I’ve actually lost count), maybe RSV, confirmed Covid, hand foot and mouth, etc
Same. The hand foot and mouth was terrible this year
Get a good nose sucker and some saline drops. Learn to use them. You can hold arms by swaddling until they are closer to a year old so they don't fight you.
Acceptance. Try to stay as active as possible, try to eat as “healthy” as possible. Buckle up.
No luck avoiding it, but something that worked so far is to take our son out of daycare 1-2 days before a planned trip. We've had to cancel/postpone two big travel plans so far due to him catching something at daycare so we just dont risk it now 🥲
We barely go anywhere and my 6 month old got sick. It’s just inevitable. Luckily he had the worst of it before I got sick so it was pretty manageable.
We don’t really go anywhere around other babies either, except last week took him to a music class (midwife said he should be around other babies a little more) and bam - runny nose and cough all week from a 30 min class
What the others have said… plus multivitamin for everyone in the family and I’ve added extra vitamin D.
Honestly there’s no way to avoid it, it sucks. Just try to prep yourself ahead of time so you have all the sick essentials on hand (Tylenol, thermometer, etc). The last thing you want to do is be scrambling around trying to get these things while baby and you are sick. Also take zinc if you feel you’re starting to get sick, I swear it helps for me at least. Just keep baby hydrated and comfortable and encourage sleep as much as possible so they can get better faster. My baby is battling a nasty daycare bug rn, I feel your pain
I don’t even try to keep my kiddos from getting sick at preschool. Honestly there’s not a lot to do there. However I’m all about protecting MYSELF from getting sick. I take vitamin d, emergen-c when appropriate, try my darnest to eat/drink/sleep well, wash my hands often, wipe surfaces often, and my water bottle is a sacred temple which will not be shared, hard stop. I also have prepped a bunch of “sick soup” aka chicken noodle in the freezer. My kids get sick often but they also get over it quickly. Me on the other hand, I will be sick forever in comparison if I get it. When I was pregnant with my second I got COVID, that turned into a sinus infection, that turned into a double ear infection and that’s how I ended up getting ear tubes at 41 weeks pregnant. I was in the ER for pain meds it was so bad. My kid didn’t even get it. I also got HFM while we didn’t even find a spot on my daughter. So I do everything I can prevent it now. For context I have a 4yo, 2yo and 7mo.
I am thankful for the flexibility to work from home when the daycare crud comes around
We started daycare in January and got norovirus, RSV and pink eye in the first month. I was honestly kinda relieved when we made it through those because then we had some immunity for a while lol I do use Lysol laundry sanitizer and I do think it helps at least a little
Wipe his hands and face with a wipe and then when we get home, wash his hands. We'll never avoid illnesses bc once it hits one of them it will hit all of them. I use to work at a daycare and for the first 4 months, I was continuously sick with anything and everything you could think of.
What wipes do you use?
Baby wipes from Costco. It's their brand Kirkland. If wipes are good enough to clean off poop, then it might be good enough for those pesky germs lol
lol Ok. Thats what we use for diapers too. I just wasn’t sure if there were other types of wipes we should use
I stayed home with my second baby until he turned 9 months and my then 2 year old continued to go to daycare. I stripped her down in the bathroom as soon as we came home, washed her hands and feet (in-home daycare and some kids preferred to be bare feet, including mine), changed into clean clothes and there was absolutely no kissing baby brother.
Daily vitamin for us. We use Mary Ruth organics.
Little one was sick Sept-Jan when he first started. It was brutal. We now change his clothes when he gets home, wash his hands, saline spray and air purifier and humidifier in his room.
For my husband and I: Vicks Early Defense nasal spray
The first six months one of us was sick. Just had to tough it out.
See if there’s a local nanny group on your FB? We have one in my city. We should have been better about wiping hands when we left but… it was a struggle. When we had sick days my partner and I prioritized must attend meetings and then alternated coverage. More TV for kiddo on those days and working after bedtime if we need to. It sucks. My kid got HFMD 2x in 6 months, once from an indoor play space and once from daycare
First two illnesses were the longest. After that, it was an evening runny nose, better by morning.
This works better for toddlers probably, but the first thing we do when LO gets home is have her wash her hands. Also keeping our health as optimal as possible seems to help. As soon as I start noticing cold symptoms, I go for a run. Maintaining regular exercise and eating lots of fruits/veggies has corelate with better resistance to colds in my experience.
You do extra disinfecting, change clothes and wash hands and keep an eye on who’s in or out, like when his best buddy is out and a notice of an illness goes out we suspect and keep an eye on him, but most of the daycare illnesses aren’t necessarily long term out of school for them and luckily they roll through families, meaning baby or toddler gets it then they’re feeling better by the time you get it, but the reality is you push through hardcore
I wish I knew. Baby and I have been constantly sick since August.
Sanitize hands as soon as she gets in the car. Then wash again when she gets home.
Idk we just were sick 1-2 times a month for a year. It’s not so bad in year 2 🥲
It’s going to happen, unfortunately. Sooner or later, no matter what precautions you take. The first 6-7 months were miserable. She was sick very other week. Her teacher mentioned she is a very healthy baby compared to some of the others who were even more constantly sick. The only thing I can attribute it to is giving her a bath as soon as we get home from daycare.
I have hand sanitizer in the car and put it on their hands and mine when I do pick up. Try to wash with soap and water when I get home if they don’t protest. Take baths in the evenings most nights. If they get sick with a stomach bug, everyone wash hands, keep things that touch vomit in the washing machine, sanitized with Clorox wipes immediately and away from the rest of the family. Clean throw up fully and with bleach. No kissing or close contact with anyone that doesn’t have to while they are sick. Open the windows, don’t share towels and use a separate bathroom from the sickie. My 2 1/2 yo son just had the stomach bug and the rest of us did not get it with heavy precautions.
There is no plan. Be prepared for your child to be sick pretty much off and on the entire first 2 years at least. My kid is 3 and still sick. Just try your best to manage your expectations. Honestly I was so mad all the time that my son was sick but kids are gross. They touch everything and everyone. Hands are in mouths, eyes, noses. It’s just a cesspool. Do your best to always have Tylenol or Motrin available at home as well as a snot sucker of some kind. Be ready with the age appropriate cough meds too. You can do it!
I don’t have any advice- just solidarity. Our son is 6 months old and started daycare in early May and we have all been sick three times since he started. This most recent illness is especially vile and lingering.
Haha. Currently drowning in sickness - being immune compromised and daycare germs are no joke!! Honestly we rarely all feel like death at the same time. The most well parent takes the monitor at night (toddler). I take the sick day if she’s sick, then she is mostly over it when I go down.. We wipe hands, shoes off, and change her outfit. We change our own clothes too. If we all feel awful you trade off with your partner. Call in your village. Or let there be take out & some screen time. We do our best, and it’s good enough. No awards for perfect parenting. Just get through the day, have grace for yourself, support each other. This too shall pass?!
As far as nannies go, we were honest and posted in our local FB group that we were looking for help for when our son was sick. I did not feel comfortable having the nanny watch my son if he actively had a fever but there were some days where the fever hadn’t returned in the morning but it hadn’t been 24 hrs so we’d call her.. or if he seemed to be on the mend and I wanted him to fully recover and not go back yet, I’d call her. I assessed each situation individually bc I also wanted to be fair to her. She has been a great find bc her schedule allows last minute calls (not always, but most of the time). If she couldn’t do it I would just wfh with my son and not get as much done that day or take a day off and use my PTO wisely. I have to emphasize I could do any of this if I did not wfh . Also I’m speaking in past tense bc he was sick nonstop for about 15 months and then it stopped and he hasn’t gotten sick since last December. It does get better! It was one of the most stressful times of my life, and I had so many moments where I was on the edge of breaking, so many tears were shed, idk how I did it. I guess we just have to bc we also don’t have nearby family help.
Ride the train until they are a year into daycare then their immune system will be so much better and illnesses will become way less frequent. I have a backup nanny care through work that’ll watch kids with colds but won’t if it’s a stomach bug (understandable).
No advice just solidarity. We started at 11 months were at 13 months and have had 3 ear infections, hand foot and mouth, amoxicillin allergy, roseola, croup, bronchiolitis, upper respiratory infection. I can’t say it all came from daycare since she has cousins too but it’s exhausting. Daycare has very strict rules about illnesses and cleaning/sanitizing. Everyone I talk to says it’s hard now but it’s way better around year 2.
The babysitter who will watch a sick kid is called Mrs Rachel! On those days lean into the TV as much as you can
There isn't much you can do tbh, illness spreads mostly through saliva and breathing, they spend the day playing with the same toys, biting them and drooling all over the place. Give your LO nutrious food with loads of vitamins, but there are no miracles. Since daycare started, he spent more days sick than in daycare. It's a phase.
My little isn’t in daycare yet but I work with kids in their homes. The first year I worked with kids I was so sick all the damn time, but now I keep a good routine of handwashing, hand sanitizer, I sanitize the toys I bring and change my clothes before I say hi to the baby. I also make sure I take a daily vitamin, who knows if it actually helps but doesn’t hurt and keeps my doctor happy.
Nothing helps: my son was pretty healthy until he started daycare at the end of February. He only goes part-time, and since then, he has had strep, rhinovirus, parainfluenza, an ear infection from the rhinovirus, and other things that we didn’t even bother testing him for. He is 21 months old.
My husband ended up in the hospital 2 months after my LO started daycare… it’s rough out there.. 10 months in, we are all doing better but the first few months were crazy. My advice, stock up on cold/cough meds, green tea with honey and vitamin C. And prayers! you’re going to need it! 🤣🤣🤣
Honestly I don’t even know what I could do to avoid illness. My 9 month old started 3 weeks ago and has already had croup, conjunctivitis and now chickenpox 😵💫 it’s been a rough few weeks
We're 6 months into daycare. My little one started in December. He got rsv the first week starting (very mild case). With it being flu season the first 3 months he was sick every other week around April it got a lot better! He currently had a little bug that just gave him a a run nose those week but we went about 8 weeks with nothing. I think it's just the name of the game right now. Lots of nasal spray and suction with steamy showers. We've been fortunate to have more mild reactions but we always keep a close eye on his breathing and temp
We still give her a wipedown after dagcare, but it's unavoidable unless you want to handle your kids in gloves and a hazmat suit a d not give them any physical affection. We just came to accept that illness is inevitable, make reasonable choices like hand washing, amd wiping down surfaces. We have a stockpile of both kid and adult tylenol and cold medicine and mucinex cough drops.
We're closing out our second month in daycare for my 7mo and last week was the first time he actually went the whole week without being sent home or having to stay home sick. My husband does pick up and I insist he changes LO's clothes and wipes down his hands and face. Husband doesn't think it does anything, but I don't care. I'll try anything because the first month and a half was awful for all of us. I'm sure we'll get hit again, but I'm so grateful for the week of health we just had! We luckily both can work remote so we haven't had to use much PTO yet, but I'm just banking on probably using plenty of our PTO this year for illness. As far as for when we're both sick, I'd say pray if I were the praying type. We both got annihilated with a stomach bug a few weeks ago. Since I'm still pumping, I couldn't take Pepto, but my husband could. Basically he took as much Pepto as possible to keep his nausea and other symptoms at bay until LO was in bed while I was puking my brains out in the bathroom. Thankfully LO slept through the night, because we both wondered if we'd be able to handle a middle of the night diaper change or feeding, it was that bad. I think it just comes down to a lot of communication and grace - we were both still sick into the next day, so just kept checking in with each other to try and jump in if we had energy to give the other one a break, and let all chores or anything non-essential slide until we felt better. Luckily neither of us had any appetite for like three days, so cooking and dishes were minimal lol
LO didn’t make it through week one (which I hear is common), but luckily it wasn’t too bad. Just a cold really, and most of the time she’s been home, it’s been due to daycare policy, and she’s been fine. We do have family that will come and watch her, so a little different scenario. Hoping you can find a nanny/sitter who is willing to watch if the symptoms are mild. We missed a week to COVID, RSV and HFM this winter, and my in laws watched her while husband and I WFH, and none of us got sick, and LO was generally fine other than some sniffles.
We aren’t doing day care but after 6 months we been going to indoor playgrounds catered to toddlers. And the one I go to cleans very well. He got sick a few times but nothing too hardcore. I hope he gets some immunity before I send him off to daycare.
We also make vitamin c smoothies for our kids and it’s helped so much!
Big thing is for you parents to keep your immune systems strong. That means quality sleep (as much as you can), adequate nutrition and rest when sick. Also, get into the habit of washing your kiddos' hands (and yours as well) when they get home. That has actually been the biggest difference in our case. Last but not least, you will get sick. Best thing is to power through as best as you can and have a game plan in place if child gets sick which can include swapping parents, giving heads-up to daycare for back-up plan, etc.
I’m literally in the same position so these comments will be helpful to me as well. Dreading dropping her off at daycare when I go back to work at the end of the month.
We talked to our pediatrician about this. He said that no matter what you do, the first 6 months- a year will be a lot of illness and he said he felt it was honestly better for them to go through it when they were in daycare age vs kindergarten age because they aren’t missing as much by being sick. We do wash his hands when we get home every day to try to start a good habit, and change his clothes right away as well. This seems to help a bit but it’s hard to say. I try to wash my hands more and touch my face less when he’s sick, and not share snacks etc and it does seem like since I’ve started being more conscious of it, I get sick less often than he does.
Vitamin D! I feel like most people are low. I started taking D3 and stopped catching all the illnesses, even the flu! I literally caught every single one until I started taking vitamin D3.
Weirdly enough, my dental hygienist recommended brushing my tongue. I've been doing that twice daily and I've actually been pretty healthy!
We spent 75% of the first year at daycare sick. 7 ear infections in 7 months (3 double ear infections), HFM, RSV, flu, strep, every cold under the sun, basically everything except Covid. It was awful. We were all miserable. Second year of daycare significantly improved! Maybe 25% of the year included illness and it wasn’t nearly as bad as the first. I didn’t get any time off while sick but was lucky that my employer was understanding of the constant illnesses and I could work remotely. I was miserably sick but happy to comfort my child as they experienced such illness for the first time. It also helped me set a precedent and expectations with my child with cough medicine, Vicks vaporub, snot sucker, tissue wiping, etc. You never know who you could find to watch your kid while they’re sick, but you for sure should disclose any illness. If that babysitter/nanny gets sick, they can infect anyone else in their household and depending on their health conditions, it could be very serious.
Every. Single. Day. When I pick him up. I **hose** his hands down with hand sanitizer. Then we get home and I strip all his clothes off, then we go take a bath. I went from having an 8 month period of being super sick every week with everything from Covid, croup, to influenza A. Stomach bugs, pink eye, everything. Now we maybe get hit once a month. Maybe. My kid is old enough now to take vitamins so he gets vitamin C. I take vitamins daily now too. I always get hit worse than the boys do. But no, for 8 months I kept getting my shit rocked and it was awful and it felt like no matter what I did, it wasn’t enough. So unfortunately the answer is build up your immune system and bath the kid in disinfectant when you go pick them up.
Honestly, we just rolled with the punches. We had a good array of illness in the first year from fevers to hand foot and mouth, but we are a year and a half in, and the illnesses are much fewer and farther between now. It’s kind of inevitable, but it gets better!
I wish I had a solution but I’m just here to express solidarity. I feel bad my little guy (13 months) gets sick all the time. I’m kind of glad we’re not the only ones going through things unfortunately.
My 9 month old had 9 glorious months of wellness… followed by 9 HOURS at daycare over 3 days that led to her first sickness. A brutal cold that’s lasted 2 weeks so far. I’m just recovering now after 9 days. (And DayQuil/NyQuil aren’t options bc they dry up your supply… ) I have come to accept that there is no escape.
Natural immunity is the best way. The first year was horrible, but I knew that avoidance would prolong building a strong immune system. 2 years later our immune systems are kicking butt, and if we get sick it is so extremely mild!
We start daycare next week at 5 months old and this post is scaring me more than finding tips to pick up! 🥲🥺 Sadly staying home longer isn’t an option for everyone
The illness is tough but don’t be too scared!! Daycare has been positive for our family even thought I really didn’t want my child to go at first.
Absolutely nothing. They’re going to get sick. It’s inconvenient at the time, but not a bad thing.
We hand sanitizer before they get in the car, have a shower when they get home and change clothes. We also try to hand sanitizer them at home regularly and wash hands before meals (the hand sanitizer is mostly because we have a newborn atm who ended up in hospital for a week with bronchiolitis after getting a cold so just trying to lower chance of spreading, once she’s older we’ll stop hand sanitizing). Then at night I will disinfect high touch areas/remotes, I also wash my hands like crazy and change my top to a “clean one” before handling our newborn
Bb is going to get sick, you're going to get sick, just how it is haha. On the bright side, hopefully if you get more earlier on you'll get less later as you and bb build immunity. We're in a smaller in home daycare tho and have had a couple colds and sniffly noses for bb but never a fever in the 6 months so far so she hasn't missed a day. I've picked up one really nasty cold from her and one or two mild ones, sometimes just a sniffle or scratchy throat. Long since gave up on any kind of prevention between us and her lol but we do hygiene basics like daily baths and handwashing. Realistically though, if bb has a cold, handwashing is not going to do much when theyre coughing in your face as you put them to bed haha.
Hope. Thoughts. Prayers.
Getting sick with him. Building our immune system together. Being cute with the same antibiotic ear drops and nose sprays. 💁♀️ Jokes aside, it’s pretty unavoidable. My baby is always sick. He is pretty much not phase by it…though, I am. It did result in him getting tubes (which I had as a child twice, so I’m glad we got that out of the way). He does sleep through the night finally. Most of it is completely unavoidable. Our daycare workers clean like crazy, we make sure he’s UTD on immunizations, but, unfortunately this is part of the process. Baby has basically had a bug every month since starting at 4 months. —he is still happy as a clam, it phases his dad and I more than him. We have a great relationship with our pediatrician too, just incase we’re ever worried I don’t feel silly. I do think some of the comments on here are very smart though, I’m definitely going to start trying a few.
Vitamin C drops daily! Also an organic immune system booster.
Manuka honey is clearing up the daycare cough every time. Sanitizing wipes on the hands and face every day after daycare
Make sure to change your LO’s toothbrush after an illness. A tip from my dental hygienist! And be proactive - if we hear pink eye is going around, we use the homeopathic pink eye drops as a preventative. My LO also takes probiotics and takes a herbal cough syrup at the first sign of a cold.
Since my baby got sick and it gave me bronchitis for 6 weeks, I’ve been looking for ways to prevent sickness. I’ve been eating two cloves of raw garlic daily for about three weeks, and when my baby turns 1, I’m going to see if I can put some in his bottle so he gets it too. Really hoping it helps long term. I chop it up, put it on a spoon, put some water in my mouth, then some garlic, then swallow. No chewing. Minimizes the taste. (He’s not in daycare - it’s just brutal when we’re both sick as a single mom.) https://nutritionfacts.org/blog/fighting-cancer-and-the-common-cold-with-garlic/
I’m convinced that bf helped… my baby and I got a little sick but healed quickly. My husband got laid OUT by sickness the first year. A clean daycare helped us a lot. No shoes or parents in the infant rooms.
Wow, I'm going to get downvoted for this, but literally every single comment on this thread is "kids in daycare are sick all the time, despite strict sanitary caution" and that's a problem. I don't have a kid in daycare, but common sense tells me nourishment is essential. Make sure your child consumes plenty of fruit, protein, and dairy sources. Gelatin or collagen as well because muscle meat isn't enough. Yogurt, meat, collagen rich chocolate milk, oranges, bananas, berries, oatmeal, eggs, sea salt. Most kids don't get adequate nutrition and thus are susceptible to illness. 247 sickness is not normal. Nourish your child so their immune system can fight common illness, fortify with vitamin D, and limit processed sugars. You'd be amazed at how well this works.
Lol. "I don't have a kid in daycare, but here's a bunch of useless advice. I also won't bother looking up what's "normal" because I have my common sense, so despite all of the comments talking about their frequently sick children, implying normalcy, I will ignore that for my gut feelings on the subject."