Constant illness in toddler, when to worry

[appleberrycrumble3]

DD is 17 months, entered nursery at 10 months. Since then been nonstop illnesses, which I know is par for the course. However, I reckon we’ve only had 2-3 weeks of being well since December. Quite often she’s not even over one cold before showing symptoms of a different one. She can’t catch a break.

She’s also lost weight, which we are keeping an eye on. It’s probably because she’s had three or four rounds of atomach flu plus regular flu/colds and goes off her food. But I can’t help I but worry though when clothes that were snug on her are now loose.

Despite it all she’s happy and cheerful most of the time. Should I push GP for a referral to paediatrics or for bloods? Our HV are utterly useless unfortunately. Something feels not right to me but not sure if IABU. Our oldest had the constant illness when starting nursery but I don’t recall it being quite like this.

Bump?

It's standard at that age at nursery! Hopefully will improve when the weather gets better. I have a 3 year old and he is the same. Although the illnesses this winter are not as nasty as his first winter in nursery!

@JustKeepSw1mming thank you. Did yours lose weight, too? If she weren’t so small I reckon o wouldn’t worry. But it’s that she’s literally not recovered from one illness before the next starts, combined with weight loss, that makes me feel something’s wrong 🙁

13 cold a year is normal at this age. That’s just cold and there are all the other illnesses too. Plus illness is more heavily weighted to occurring in the winter months. The amount of illnesses is well within the norm.

Hi OP,

I had this with my DS and it turned out to be anaemia. He was on a gluten free diet and couldn't tolerate supplemental vitamins. It turns out that wheat flour in this country is fortified with vitamins and iron so he was losing out there too.

I started giving him an age-appropriate dose of readybrek every morning, made up into biscuits with apple juice and powdered ginger and the viruses went away overnight and never came back (touching wood now). We went from 66% attendance at school to 99%.

You can do a dietary analysis to check vitamin intake on a free website like checkyoufood online

I hope that helps.

If this continues through spring/summer I'd question the nursery. Are they deep cleaning and are the children getting outside enough? I'm a childminder and although it is normal to get some bugs, this seems extreme.

While yes normal for kids to get sick (a lot!) because of other kids, weather etc, the losing weight thing isn’t unfortunately so yes I’d bring her to the doctor but citing losing weight as the reason as when your child is sick the first thing they ask is are they eating and drinking and for it to get to the point that weight is loss just means they might need to check there’s nothing more even though she’s probably just unlucky x