I have three kids, the youngest was born last spring and been in daycare since the fall. I think it’s been much better- COVID protocols have seemed to have kept my baby from getting as sick as my older two. I’m 6+ months of daycare I had to take off 3 days of work for him. Luckily COVID tests are readily available and come back pretty quickly.

Anonymous wrote:i would say save as much as you can as you never know. unless you think you will be able to take some unpaid leave if needed.
even if your baby does not fall sick much (mine did not and we started daycare at a center mid last year) if it is a center it might close for 10 days if there is a covid case.

Good point!

i would say save as much as you can as you never know. unless you think you will be able to take some unpaid leave if needed.
even if your baby does not fall sick much (mine did not and we started daycare at a center mid last year) if it is a center it might close for 10 days if there is a covid case.

Save as much as you have plus vacation. A lot of these posters are talking about their healthy kids during pre-covid protocols where a sniffle wasn’t reason the call the parents and be sent home. Our center used to have a rule not to return until 24 hours after a fever ended - now it’s 48 hours.

Save it all! If you’re one of the few lucky ones, especially with a toddler, you can use it for a nice celebratory vacation.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I have shockingly healthy kids, but my youngest is 2 and maybe missed 3 days in 2 years due to sickness. Her daycare also didn’t close for covid. My oldest is 4 and maybe missed a week as a baby/toddler (HFM and a nasty cold) but hasn’t missed any in the last year. It’s not necessarily all doom and gloom. In fact neither child has ever had an antibiotic.

I can’t believe it. Certainly not with my kid or anyone I’ve ever known.

DS was out more than he was in daycare last year. It killed us - not just how often (and once seriously) he was sick - but the loss of work. We pulled him out.

I have three kids and in all of their years, between them, I missed five days of work due to illness. But, original PP and I are in the great minority. Most people I know hoarded their leave and used every single bit of it for kid illnesses.

2 days for every two weeks.

Another parent whose kid rarely got sick here too. Strong immune systems run in the family. Everyone on my side of the family will go years without needing a sick day, so in hindsight it's not a total surprise that my child was the same way. She had colds the first year, but not severe enough to be miserable or need to stay home from daycare per their rules (no fevers or whatever the symptom list was). BUT, we did get HFM (only her) and a few noroviruses (some/all of us), so even those naturally tough immune systems can't fight off everything!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe I have shockingly healthy kids, but my youngest is 2 and maybe missed 3 days in 2 years due to sickness. Her daycare also didn’t close for covid. My oldest is 4 and maybe missed a week as a baby/toddler (HFM and a nasty cold) but hasn’t missed any in the last year. It’s not necessarily all doom and gloom. In fact neither child has ever had an antibiotic.

My kid was only out maybe 3 days the first year. He never ran a fever, the absence was for a mild diarrhea. So the whole "all daycare kids are constantly sick" trope wasn't my experience.

I will say some of the mild runny noses he had might be excluding now with COVID protocols.

I posted upthread about 6-8 colds stats. To be clear, my kid has never had a fever or needed a doctor visit or antibiotics since starting daycare. But COVID daycare rules say that congestion is an exclusionary symptom right now, so every mild runny nose (every two months for us) means I have to figure out how to work with an energetic toddler at home. I'm burning all my PTO just for that.

Of course, different kids have different experiences, so maybe other kids are sicker, but even very healthy children are out a lot these days.

Anonymous wrote:I’m one of the PP with kids that rarely get sick. Our kids all take a daily vitamin C in addition to a multivitamin. I think adding the extra vitamin c has been really helpful. In fact our daycare recommended it (in consultation with a child’s dr). I have noticed that there are rarely kids out sick. Only 7 kids so easy to keep track in that specific class.

Another of the posters whose kids rarely got sick. We did nothing special. It was a large center. No way to predict.

I definitely used all of my 3 weeks of sick leave a year and dh did too. I caught everything from my kid too. I came to work sick a lot that first year, but now with telework that would be so much easier.

I have to laugh at how pre-baby I thought that I was really healthy and that my healthy diet kept me from getting sick. Nope- I just wasn't around kids.