To think that gastro / norovirus is not a new thing as mum and MIL claim?

[PlumPudd]

We’ve got an 18 month old toddler and have had around 5 nasty bouts of gastroenteritis or norovirus since he was born. Almost always starting with him picking something that is going round at playgroup, vomiting all over us and then 24 - 48 hours later my partner and I both getting it.

Any time we get it the reaction from MIL is “how did he get that then? You should wash his hands more / be careful what you give him to eat? My two never had this when they were little.” AKA strong implication that we’ve done something wrong. A bit frustrating as we do wash DS’s hands and cook his food carefully etc. but short of keeping him away from all other children there is basically no way to avoid getting it from time to time because it’s a super contagious virus and toddlers are finger sucking face licking germ bags!! MIL is lovely and a hypochondriac and very much one to look for solutions rather than empathise so I don’t think she’s meaning to say it’s our fault, but her reaction to things like this is often to try to place blame.

The reaction from mum is less judgey but equally perplexed and she keeps saying that gastro / noro just wasn’t a thing when she had young kids (80’s 90’s), that we only ever got sick if we had food poisoning and that it must be a new virus.

Can anyone who had kids in the 80’s / 90’s shed light on this? Are MIL and mum right and gastro / noro just wasn’t a thing or are they rose tinting the past?

Like everyone has said, ‘tummy bugs’ are not new. The names you are calling them are all that’s different.

Also - kids are different! I am not a sicky person, none of my family are. If we’re going to be ill with a tummy issue, it’s going to be from the other end. DSS on the other hand, was a sicky child. He was sick more as a child than my three have ever been in their entire lives!

Having said that, that is an unusually high amount of sickness I think. It might be worth seeing if another childcare setting works better.

From the time my youngest entered childcare until she was 7 (when covid struck and school and nursery were actually bothering to clean properly and enforce basic hand hygiene) we were probably take down by stomach bugs around 4-5 times a year. It is definitely linked to childcare!

That does seem a lot. My dd is 9 and has only ever been sick twice!

I've had the odd stomach bug and norovirus twice. Norovirus is the work of the devil I have never been so ill.

My two girls are grown up now and I only remember them ever vomiting once each (until their mid teens when it was alcohol induced but that's another story!)

Your little one does seem to be prone to picking up sickness bugs, hopefully grow out of it and have the constitution of an ox.

My DB was hospitalised with gastroenteritis when he was a baby and my grandmother’s little brother died of it when she was a young girl so it’s hardly new…

My ex BIL was born in 1992 and hospitalised with noro when he was 4. I think that in the past people used less medical terms to explain stuff eg "doesn't agree with me" instead of "intolerance to" so there was norovirus and gastroenteritis but they didn't even have the 48 hour rule back then because it was a different time. (Maybe medical people were following that rule but it wasn't in schools )

When I was training as a nurse, in the 1980s, one of my friends nursed a baby with gastroenteritis, so it existed as a named diagnosis back then, @PlumPudd.

I think I had and my mum confirms 2 stomach bugs as a kid in the 90s in I think 2011-2012 I knew a mother and child who where both hospitalised with norovirus I had never heard of it before then isn’t it a winter vomiting bug?

They have forgotten. I couldn’t tell you the minor illnesses my kids had 2 years ago, so I’m sure I won’t remember anything in 40 years. My mother is often coming out with things about our childhoods that just didn’t happen the way she remembers.
I definitely had many stomach bugs in the eighties, but I think we stayed at home a bit longer as nobody cared about attendance and mothers often didn’t work, so perhaps the spread was lessened a little.
For children under five don’t forget that the patterns of childhood illnesses have been disrupted by the pandemic, too.

It’s definitely not new. Maybe it didn’t get “named” but my mum talks often about that fact one of us would get a stomach bug then as soon as one recovered the next sibling would catch it and so on.

Exactly this. Sicky bug, tummy bug. We all had them and did exactly that, water only and then if you were feeling better, dry toast or jacob's crackers.

The bugs were always around, we just didn't call them gastroenteritis or norovirus.

I definitely remember hearing about gastroenteritis as a child in the 80's and I remember getting sickness and diarrhoea several times too.
My PIL often put bugs like this down to food poisoning but it's never a confirmed case, so it could be anything.
My sister and her DC are really susceptible to sickness bugs. I think some people just are, my DC have had some nasty ones and a confirmed case of food poisoning but not with the frequency of my Sister's family.

In fact I don't think I heard the name norovirus until the publicity of it spreading on cruise ships

It's the nursery's. Did your MIL and DM send their dc to nursery? That could be the difference if not.

When we put our dc in nursery no.1 we got repeated bouts of Noro. When I took him out (as on mat leave) we got none. When I put both dc in nursery no.2 we got no Noro - extra hygiene measures in place due to Covid, so we got literally none of the usual nursery bugs.

I do think the hygiene practices in nursery no.1 must have been questionable. We were sick ALL the time for 9 months straight with one thing or another. I don't think that was entirely normal and I don't think 5 bouts of Noro in 18 months is entirely typical either.

Little ones pick up tummy bugs and always have. My DF used to say that upon return to kindergarten or later school at least one of the men every week were down with something. I can remember having tummy bugs that spread to my DPs.

My DS would get them sometimes. Or a cold. Or something.

Same here, no one in my childhood ever had anything other than a tummy bug and that wasnt that common I can only remember about 3 instances of my childrn being sick in their whole childhoods so to me 4 times in a year is crazy

They all went to nursery but I'm of the dirt is good for you camp so didnt overly bother with hand washing or excessive house cleaning

I never got sick, when I got what at the time I thought was Norovirus, the vomiting and diarrhoea phase lasted about three days and nights. (After the first night there was nothing left to come out, but that didn't stop my body trying.)

Then I needed a few more days of work not just to be fully recovered, but to be sure I wasn't contagious.

Though I don't remember why I decided it was Norovirus, whatever I had was more than "a tummy bug" as we usually know it.

D&V. Diarrhoea and vomiting. In the 60s my mother and aunt spent all one Christmas at the launderette washing the sheets for six kids suffering with it.

It is a lot. We've had Noro once in 3.5 years when it was going round nursery last winter. Five in 18 months is horrid for you all! I'd be v fed up. Where is he getting it? Childcare?

And I wasn't a sicky person either till I got Norovirus! Hadn't been sick in 25 years (other than due to booze) and thought I was immune to sick bugs. Alas ...

4/5 bouts of vom bug by age 18m is a lot.

My eldest never had one at all until he was about 2.5, he's now nearly 6 and has only had about 3 and has been in childcare minimum 4 days a week since 14 m old. My youngest has only had one vom bug as a baby, DH and i also got the same & it was a bad one. Now age 3 and hasn't caught one since. We aren't massively clean freak either.

I sort of agree. My Dc, born ‘90s, didn’t get sickness bugs. They went to a childminder and then nursery. I’ve never had one, as far as I know, and I’m in my 50s. I don’t think I’ve ever been sick/vomited.

Yes sickness bugs have always been a thing but 5 in that sort of time is a fair amount and for you all to get them

This! Also grew up in the 70s. It was the same bug, only it didn't have a 'viral' name. I remember one particular and very memorably (in a bad way) Christmas when a load of relatives came to stay, bringing a "tummy bug" with them....