What's your nurseries d & v policy?

[Rosebud05]

I ask following an incident last week and a conversation with the nursery manager this morning.

Apparently, our nursery has recently relaxed the '48 hours away after last episode' to waiting for 2 occasions of sickness or diahorrea before calling parents/asking parents to keep their child off for 48 hours after last episode. This is because there were several occasions in the winter when babies were sent home having had diahorrea and it was just because they were teething, and were absolutely fine the next day.

This has happened with both of my kids and, as a working parent, it's a complete PITA but I've always seen it as one of the hassles of nursery based care.

I really object to the idea that a child who has vomited will be kept in the nursery setting to see if he/she vomits again or if a child has vomited in the night they can be brought in and pass it on to everyone else before they vomit up their breakfast and their parent gets called.

Do most nurseries have very tight rules about this, or is this '2 voms and you're out' approach the norm?

Ours has the 48 hour rule, but I think they have to actually have proper D&V for them to do anything about it. DD sometimes has grim nappies (including at nursery), but this is often due to snottiness, not true diarrhea. Equally she ocassionally vomits if she gags on food or is over fed and the nursery haven't been bothered about it. She hasn't yet had a proper D&V bug, but I guess that it would be obvious that it was more than a teething nappy or a one off spew. Given how prone some babies are to being sick it would be a massive over reaction to exclude them for 48 hours.

I don't mean gagging/vomiting on food. I mean throwing up loads a couple of hours after having eaten.

In terms of babies being sick, both of mine chucked up loads when they were on just milk (and one refluxy one threw up a couple of times just after finishing a meal) but I can't honestly think of a single occasion they threw up loads between meals and weren't actually ill.

I would expect them to be sent home if obviously ill in that way then.

The situation was that a just turned year old baby threw up LOADS in the park after nursery on Thursday evening, well over an hour after having tea.

I was a bit surprised to see him in nursery on Friday, though not surprised to hear from my dd that his mum was called to take him home on Friday morning as he had been sick and not surprised that my ds was vomiting all weekend.

I know it's difficult call with babies and sickness, but it seems crazy to me to take them back to a nursery just over 12 hours after being sick. I thought the 48 hour rule was to ensure that it was nothing contagious and to enable the baby to rest at home.

Aside from the unpleasant weekend my ds had (and to be fair, he could have picked it up on Thursday and been ill anyway), there are a lot of children with SEN in that nursery and babies - it seems very unfair to do anything but err on the side of caution.

If the staff are sick, I should imagine that they go straight home not hang about to see if it happens again.

48 hours, and 4 poos (or possibly 3, I think, but that sounds ridiculous) in a day is treated as "D". Any vomiting is treated as "V" except I think for milky spit up in the baby room.

as I've been pondering this today, I've realised that one must differentiate between 'd' and 'v' in procedure.

I work in a nursery, and the 48 hour rule holds in all cases. One strike and your out when it comes to spontaneous vomiting during the day,

Obviously teething and sicky babies who bring up milk after being burped would not be sent home, and there is a clear difference between loose and diarrhea and we can tell, as i am sure most parents can to.

The problem we find is parents don't tell us, and then their child is sick and sent home, when they pick up they tell us, 'they were sick in the night, early morning, on the way in e.t.c but they thought it was nothing'

Argh it is so annoying.