• The germs passed around at daycare and kindergartens spread quickly to families
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This is the longest my son has had the flu. It’s been six going on seven weeks, and every week, we wake up to something new. It starts with a runny nose, then a cough.
You treat those then wake up to a fever, a runny nose, then a cough. So and so the cycle goes. Just when we think we are out of the woods and we stop giving the medicine, boom! We start over.
Moreover, ‘Kindergarten viruses’, as I call them, are not just a parent’s nightmare; they are basically all of society’s nightmare. When little kids get sick in school, they infect each other, their teachers, their parents, their siblings, the doctors… Heck, even the bus driver is not safe during flu season.
After my son got sick for the second time last month, my husband and I also contracted the flu. What was interesting was that we split the symptoms between us.
He has a runny nose and a cough. I had body pains. He healed, then I got a runny nose and a cough. I kid you not, the next day after my reinfection, my son woke up with a runny nose all over again!
Whenever I drop him at daycare and tell the teacher that we were sick that past weekend, she would almost always say, “Me, too!”
One can just imagine that if our child was sick and we were sick, the teacher was sick... That means every child at daycare had a high probability of being sick. And not just them, their parents, too. At this rate, all of society is sick, thanks to the germs being passed around at daycare and kindergartens.
In a few months, my son will start Kindergarten, and as much as I’m looking forward to this milestone for him (and more mummy time for me), I cannot help but worry about these Kindergarten viruses.
Even though he goes to daycare now, he is minimally exposed as there are only a couple of other children there. The number of comrades and teachers will increase drastically in kindergarten, which means that the likelihood of being sick will be much higher in kindergarten.
Another thing I think about, even though I shouldn’t, is when the tots infect the new baby siblings with these viruses they get at school. Babies are far more susceptible to these viruses as they do not have immunity. Having an older sibling who goes to school exposes them that much more.
Every time I weigh my options of whether or not to add a new cub to the pack, I can’t help but think about this scenario. It’s scarier for me to have a baby in a new country where the doctors pretty much don’t care to see patients.