The never ending germs

I truly believed that once my daughter was around three that we had encountered all the common colds there were floating around the toddler population, the ones she picked up from playgroup or soft play areas. For a while she didn’t always seem to have some sort of minor illness. There were no runny noses, strange rashes, excessive sneezing, or coughing for months at a time. I should have considered this the calm before the storm. Once E started preschool new allergens and a fresh population of never before encountered germs, the immunity building stage had started . After only a matter of weeks she was exchanging germs with all her school mates. She shares them with her friends, and then is so kind as to bring everything home.

Every parent who sends their children to nursery, preschool and school will know this phase. This is the point when your child is first introduced to the whole wide world of bugs…bacterial, viral, and all the other unknown bugs. While there is no doubt that this is an important stage in development where E build’s up her immune system, it is also one of the most exhausting. Taking care of a sick child can be a lot of work, but taking care of a sick child while you are sick yourself is mentally and physically draining. When E gets sick she gets nice soup and extra rest. I get sick, and I still have all the same amount of work to do including looking after E, cooking, cleaning and on little recovery sleep and my most balanced meals during the day seems to consist of fruit.

I think that the key to it all is just survival, because this shall pass . Eventually E and all the school kids will have adapted and we will be back to the norm of just having the couple seasonal colds that everyone deals with. I knew this would happen when E started preschool as she was never around many children before hand, but I am really looking forward to a day in the distant future where I don’t so often find myself thrusting tissues towards E to halt a deluge of snot.