Nursery bugs.

[Kion]

My LO is due to start nursery soon and everyone keeps telling me how she will be picking up all the bugs all the time. I realise it’s inevitable that she will get some bugs from being around others but has anyone had their babies in nursery and found it wasn’t too bad or as bad as they expected?
Can anyone give me some perspective on this?
Thanks x

DS1 was in nursery 3 days per week from 9 months to 4.5. He had 3 days off ill in that time. DS2 has been at nursery 9 months and has had a couple of days off (both due to mild colds which sent his asthma haywire). Neither of them has ever had anything worse than a cold (no D&V, no conjunctivitis, etc).

It is normal and it will happen at some point anyway, so just prepare for it and make sure you take care of yourself and keep your immune system boosted so you get sick as little as possible. I would say mine had a chesty cough and either a virus or the coughing after a virus for probably about 7 months of that first winter and spring (November until May). She started nursery in October at 9 months. I also got sick A LOT that year. Each year it's gotten easier and easier and last year (she was 3/4), she was barely sick at all. Frankly, I think better to get it over and done with as otherwise she will just get sick loads at the start of school, which I think it more disruptive.

I would strongly recommend doing everything you can to boost your immune system. Through the winters after that first year (when I was sick so much), I always take 500 mg of vitamin C, plus vitamin D, and echinacea every day, regardless of whether I'm sick or not. That helped a lot and I got sick so much less frequently the second year, even when she was really sick.

I should add to the above, that the viruses she did catch though were mild and normal. I didn't keep her home with them (unless she had a fever, which she rarely did). The only time she stayed home in 4 winters at nursery was for chicken pox, one for a vomiting bug, and another time she got bronchiolitis quite badly. Otherwise, she went in as normal, even with a cough or the sniffles. So it wasn't especially disruptive, just exhausting for us because it means you're up loads at night with a coughing miserable baby.

Thanks again ladies, that’s really helpful to prepare me for what we may be in store for. I will prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Mindutopia, thanks, that’s such good advice on keeping myself healthy. I hadn’t even thought about me! So I will be sure to take my supplements.