To ask if the first winter in childcare is as bad for germs as everyone says?

Yes. Its brutal. My boy went to nursery in the Oct at 10.5 months old. He was snotty for at least 6 months

I don’t remember mine being particularly ill themselves during their first year in childcare, but I have never had as many colds, before or since, as I had during DD1’s first year in a childcare setting. Even now I get the annual back to school cold (which I appear to have caught early this year)

It just depends on your child. Mine was fine. Never caught anything. Didn’t even catch chickenpox when it was rampant. She never missed a day. So you might be lucky!

And oh God the nits. Buy a nitty gritty comb to have it in the house and get the hedrin spray and spray on them each morning. Good luck!

Yes, it's terrible, but it has to happen sometimes, otherwise it'll be their first year at school. You will catch some of it, especially the winter vomiting bugs, because I think there's no immunity to that. Any sign of diarrhoea or vomiting they usually have a policy of having to be out a certain length of time from the last symptom before they can come back. It's worth getting the chicken pox vaccine I think, and then the annual flu vaccine.

Think it is luck of the draw. Just a few days off for chicken pox and hand/foot and mouth. Two in a large nursery from a year old. One incident where ds seemed so unwell we were blue lighted to hospital from nursery. On arrival he decided he was fine and started playing! Biggest problem was the nits. DS had a buzz cut but many long hours combing dd hair with a nit comb every day after preschool.

Permanently luminous green from October until April/May, a brief pause for assorted other rashes, blotches, chickenpox, coughs and the like until September, two weeks until the first bug (we're not even going to touch upon the nit situation) repeat for another year - and then once they start school, they'll be practically invincible as the other children are dropping like flies. Except for the nits. They'll be a constant presence and you'll be hyper alert to the smallest scrap of dark dust in their hair until they're practising for the Y6 Leavers' party.

Mine barely got sick, but the nursery is clean and most of the other families have jobs where they can keep the kids at home. We got sicker than he did!

It was horrific for two of mine, one was out a little, the other was always well (hilariously our most picky eater, but gp/ teachers always said given he lived on fruit, yoghurts and ham and cheese he possibly got everything he needed!!)

It’s the first 3 winters really. 😱 That said, I rarely missed days of work, exceptions being for vomiting bugs and chickenpox. Our nursery was happy to have them if they were snotty or coughing as long as they didn’t have a fever. They were snotty and coughing about 6 months of the year. But maybe had a fever for 4 days max, which was not hard to manage between Dh and I.

They are secondary and late primary school now, very rarely ill, and hardly miss any school.

I also took extra vitamin C and zinc all through the winter and started on an echinacea tincture as soon as anyone got a sniffle. I was rarely ill.

It's not a guaranteed nightmare - kind of a matter of luck. Neither of mine got more than a slight sniffle that didn't merit staying at home during their first winter, but SIL's oldest had non stop bad viruses in the equivalent period. And I was worried about this because I have a dreadful immune system and catch everything.

Yup awful though nothing like 25% of their time.
Worst part was it all spreading through the house so it was constant illness / caring / illness / caring.
It gets better

I basically used all my annual leave on time off for poorly children for four years. This was a while ago, I don't know whether employers give parental leave for these things now.

As they say,
"Before kids I used to think I had a good immune system. It turns out I just hadn't been spending time with people who like to sneeze on your eyeballs"
😂

Yes - even though I said upthread that DD2 “caught everything”, it was still nothing even close to 25%. And that’s with me always following the 48 hour rule for d&v.

See we haven't had anything like this. Two children who started nursery at about 12 months old and COVID aside (which they managed to dodge but had time off for being a close contact) they've missed maybe 5 days of nursery between them in all the years they were there. Now in school and they've not had more than a day of absence a year, often less. I think some children definitely get ill less and also parents have different thresholds for what they consider ill to be.

Sorry @childcaresettling but in my experience it went on for first 5 years. Tapers off slowly over that time but it is awful while you are in it.

Yes. Sadly this is a truth. It’s brutal I’m afraid.

I did night shifts to cover sick days the first years. It was pretty bad during winter. But some of their small friends were never sick.

Our daughter started nursery when she was 1 and was continuously snotty and ill for the next 18 months. We caught norovirus once a month for 6 months in a row that year. Most nurseries have a 48 hours exclusion policy following a high temperature or v&d. She missed so much nursery, it was an additional kick in the teeth in top of the cost.

Depends on the child.

DD1, no issues at all really.

DD2 I hoped would be the same, but she caught everything! And was a vomiter, so would throw up with a fever, with a cold, with chicken pox.

In terms of you catching it, again it depends. DH catches basically everything (and he is not a “man flu” person), I catch hardly anything - I’ve never caught a vomiting bug from the children, DH has caught every single one. Although once we both caught a virus flu thing from DD2. She was mildly ill for a day or so - we both felt like we might actually die. I could barely get out of bed for several days. DD1, as usual, didn’t catch it at all.

Nursery was fine for us and during the time my dd attended (3 years) she had about 5 days off in total. I followed NHS & nursery guidelines and didn't keep her off "just in case", only for d&v, fever, infectious illnesses but not if nhs said it was past the point of needing to stay off.

She was very used to being amongst lots of other children, we did baby/toddler groups every day, went to soft plays, baby raves, and had all the recommended habs plus chickenpox jab which the NHS didn't fund back then.

We never had this issue. But I do think my DS has some super strength immunity - no idea how!! He’s 8 and I can count on 1 hand how many times his missed school/nursery.

My “baby” is 26 years old and I still remember that first year of him being in nursery.

I have never been so ill in a single year before, or after.

And ear infections really bloody hurt. But aren’t as bad as when you are glued to the loo, while throwing up in the bidet trying to persuade your now PERFECTLY FINE 2 year old to bring the house phone to the bathroom to get daddy to come home. Except he couldn’t come home cos he too was puking so violently that driving was out of the question.

If I had to do it all again I’d be bunging down the Vitamin D3K2 like it was going out of fashion, munching on liver for the iron & B12 and using that stuff that allegedly kills germs while they are still at the “party in your nostrils” stage. Both DH & I were/are freelance so it was a double whammy of all the extra childcare money going out, plus lost income due to one, or both of us, coming down with the latest lurgy DS brought home. What little was left over went to the pharmacist.

Was a setting with more than 5-7 kids though. Closer to 12-15. And the second year was less awful, and so on and so forth for each following year.

But fuck me, that was a rough re-entry to work and I’d had zero warning, so was completely blindsided by it.