@Bret
Our first winter was hard. We’re in our second though, and my kid hasn’t been sick yet. In fact, he hasn’t missed daycare due to sickness in 9 months. It’s really not that bad!
Oh yes - it took a while before our son stopped bringing home bugs for all of us.
Right when we were on a few months of a healthy streak, we moved him to preschool and are dealing with bug number one right now!
Hopefully this means we will be set by kindergarten 
Someone said daycare is just buying diseases for $400 and yeah, that’s pretty much what it is.
Ali said:
Someone said daycare is just buying diseases for $400 and yeah, that’s pretty much what it is.
Shit, I hope we’re buying some damn bougie diseases for $2800.
My 19-month-old baby started daycare in August and she has been sick nearly every week with a new and different illness each time. It has been brutal. I think we have had two partial weeks of wellness in four months. And I’ve caught about half of what she’s had. We should get a punch card at our pediatrician’s office.
My husband got asked “how long has she had this illness?” at our daughter’s 18m check up and he replied “I don’t know… 18 months?”
But seriously, sometimes it’s hard to know when one illness ends and another begins. However, my daughter was sent home for a fever last week, but before that, it has been 2-3 months since she missed a day due to illness. And my 5-year-old has missed one day of Kindergarten due to illness and that’s it. It really does get better.
My first son attended daycare for 4 days before catching a fever. We thought ok no big deal. Well, day 3 of a fever and it got real. He had croup, lethargic, so much mucus he couldn’t breathe. Two 2am calls to the on-call nurse, 2 urgent care visits, and 1 ER trip pointed to RSV. He was 5 months at the time. My husband and I also caught it. I literally have never been that sick before in my entire life. I remember sitting on the floor of the ER room holding on for dear life while they attended to my son. The doctor we saw basically said kids will either get sick now in daycare or in school if they don’t attend daycare. That first year was full of colds and ear infections. I was NOT prepared.
However, he’s 2 now and it’s much much better. Unfortunately, you just have to push through that first year.
@Brook
We are currently 6 months into the first year of daycare and the last 2 months have been ROUGH. Little dude is currently fighting RSV😖
Yep 
we love our daycare (and so does little man!) but he’s definitely just going to be congested all winter, with periodic bouts of Actual Illness (like fever, or HFM, or whatever) sprinkled in. Our daycare does give two weeks of “sick time” per year, which is nice!
My baby has had a cough for 8 weeks. Hasn’t really been actively sick for the last 6 weeks, but for weeks after being sick he would throw up every time he ate because he would have a coughing fit before he could really digest anything. His daycare sent him home after about 2 weeks of that just saying his persistent cough was a problem and he needed a doctor’s note to come back, but I think it was honestly because they were tired of how hard it was to feed him. I had already told them we went to the dr the week before and he tested negative for everything and the dr said to just wait it out. I know it wasn’t their fault, but I was like THE AUDACITY of this daycare sending him home for a cough that he got WHILE ATTENDING THEIR DAYCARE. I know that’s irrational lol.
Oh, they told me. I was in denial/thought it wouldn’t be that bad/thought we could deal with it.
It was horrible for more than a year. Summertime is the only respite. He’s doing better now but still gets sick, just less often (knock on wood). He had RSV a couple weeks ago. Yay. 2.5 years old, in daycare since 9 months.
We also could not afford a nanny so it’s not like we would have done anything differently.
Wow, reading this while reaching for my bottle of Tylenol to fight this week’s infection coming from daycare…
Honestly, I’m lucky enough I have the option, and it’s a no for me with daycare.
My boy was so sick when he first started. In the first 3 months, I think he only had 3 full weeks total. He’s doing much better now, but boy did those illnesses hit me hard. I had a persistent cough that lasted much longer than his. I was coughing so long/hard that I broke a rib lol.
It’s so hard! But it really will help their immune system even though some of these germs can be SCARY. I have one daycare kid who now is a teen and is genuinely sick every couple of years. Two kids who stayed home until kindergarten and they get sick every year several times.
Is it a bad time to get pregnant again if the baby is going through the daycare phase? Because pregnant people have even weaker immunity 
Visit a McDonald’s with a playplace early. There’s a mall here with a playground and tbh it’s not that clean. I fully believe it’s inoculated our kid from getting sick as much. We’ve been visiting it since she learned to walk unsteadily.
Our first visit to daycare went fantastic. No colds or illnesses. I had to temporarily use it while I had to go into the office for a period.
Same with flights. We stayed healthy after several flights together too.
This sounds INSANE. Three-month baby over here with three months left on my maternity leave.
Darwin said:
This sounds INSANE. Three-month baby over here with three months left on my maternity leave.
You’re lucky you get 6 months; I only get 3 (12 weeks) 
Our second has a sensitive diaper area and ALWAYS gets a yeast infection following antibiotics and diarrhea. We now keep tubes of nystatin around, and I use it at night and many times during the day when he’s having issues. I also keep little cloth wipes around to pat his area dry before diapering.
If you see a diaper rash that is very red and comes on suddenly, it could be a yeast infection.