Child prone to illness, when does it get better

[Mrsandmrbear]

My DD (now almost 18 months) has been sick on and off for the last 6 months. She’s had 3 courses of antibiotics to treat some nasty infections and lots of bad colds in between. She’s not going to nursery but we do go to playgroups a lot.

After having a pretty bad case of tonsillitis I’ve kept her away from classes and playgroups for a month and she was very well. She was finally eating well and gaining some weight, since with every illness she had not eaten properly coupled with a lot of throwing up. 3 weeks after we started going to playgroups after this month, she got a very bad cold with fever and horrible chesty cough which lasted 10 days.

She only had a few minor colds during the first 12 months.

I am wondering is this something that I should expect every winter now? Does it get better? I’m so fed up with it.

Yeah you should expect a lot of this, sorry. My ds was a sicky baby, he started nursery at 12 months and he was so ill for 6 months we ended up changing our job schedules (dh and I) so we could pull him out of nursery because the sheer amount of illnesses we were constantly off work and having to keep him off nursery and still pay for it. When we pulled him out he went back to "normal amount of sicknesses". When he was 3 he went to proper nursery school and was sick for nearly the entire school term at least once every 2-3 weeks it was sheer hell resulting in a paeds referral etc where we were told he was normal, at least this child care was free now. This year age 4 he hasn't been sick just as much, but from Sept has still had hand, foot n mouth, about 3 colds, 1 chest infection and scarlet fever. And that's mild for a 6 month period for us.

@Nogodsnomasters sounds awful. Not looking forward to it. We were considering putting her in nursery at 2 or even earlier but perhaps it’s not a good idea.

I hope things will get better for you x

If they're a sicky type of kid I'd try to avoid paid for nursery as much as possible, I've heard childminder can be better for less germs but I dunno how true that is! I've been told by MIL that dh was the same as a child, caught everything going and more than once so maybe it's in the genetics.

Does she eat well enough? I've got 3dc and the middle one is like your DD. We've had the paediatric referral which came back with post viral chronic fatigue. He's been poorly an awful lot, is very pale and tires quickly.

Out of the three, he's the worst eater. We try to make up for that with vitamins. He also seems to be really effected by the weather. We're now go on holiday in January for a week to top his vitamin D up! (Very expensive solution).

The other two DC are tough as old boots and eat me out of house and home.

@weekfour she is a fussy eater so there might be some truth in it. Plus being sick a lot of the time means she is eating very little if at all during those times, which obviously doesn’t help.

I have worked really hard however on improving her diet and managed to work out some nice recipes for her so overall she is eating better now. Plus she’s taking multivitamins daily.

I just hope summer won’t be quite as bad.

It's warming up a bit. You'll probably find summer easier. I hope we do. My DS looks grey today. Try and get her out for a walk whenever you can.

Mine was constantly sick ages 2-3 till end if preschool really. It’s improved massively, he’s not been off this school year at all. It was pretty desperate work-wise for a couple of years, partner and I bartering about who had the more important meetings that day and working late into the night to make up

@weekfour I hope your DS will grow out if it and hopefully summer will be better for everyone, we all need a break.

@Leyani glad things got better for you and your DS. So there is hope.

Thanks everyone and all the best x

Just thought I'd throw in there that my son is also a poor eater, he has ASD so it's down to sensory issues and we do also give him multivitamins.

DD2(15) was a sickly baby and toddler but grew out of it around age 4 and now is rarely ill. DD1(18) was never really a sickly baby/child but for the last 12 months of so seems to constantly have some sort of cold type virus after another!