r/workingmoms • u/Suzune-chan • 6h ago
Vent The phone is ringing and it is from daycare…
Daycare is going to drive me insane.
In the last three weeks we have missed five days and been called four times. I am going to lose my sleep mind because while my work is trying to be accommodating it is hard to constantly need to be out.
The first call us because they had to wake my baby up because he was breathing weird. Went down to get him because they were so concerned. Doctor said there was nothing wrong with him.
The second time was because he was coughing and threw up. Fine that is legit. Picked him up and then we struggled to go 24 hours without throwing up because he had a runny nose and would just keep coughing until he threw up and then would smile and play the rest of the day.
The third time was yesterday because his eye was pinks I knew he didn’t have pink eye because he was still on medicine from having the throwing up incident. Told them it was because he had been coughing and he had broken a blood vessel and it was healing. They said no it was pink eye. I went to get him. Asked what the return policy was they said he would need a note to return told them I would be back on two hours. Sure enough back in two hours, no pink eye.
The they called me today because he has pink spots on his arms. I am going to go crazy. He didn’t have them when he left, slept through the meals at daycare so just had his bottle. The only thing he did different was play outside. Is it prickly heat? Who know? They said they would call me if it got worse…
I am going to lose my mind. We have been pretty constantly sick since January. But these last four weeks are killing me. So frustrated. I desperately do not want to be fired nor keep paying doctor since we have seen them six times in the last three weeks. Even though this is where we are in life right now. Does this season of illness was ever end? Will we ever not be sick?
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u/RatherBeAtDisney 6h ago
One tip, is to always send your daycare a message or tell them at drop off if there’s anything at all off ahead of time. Like the eye being pink. The rest are mostly unavoidable.
As an example - My son (he was 2) had small marks (dots) on his feet from his water shoes rubbing the day before when at the waterpark. I sent a message saying that it was that, otherwise he would have 100% been sent home cause it looked like HFM aside from the fact that the marks were on the same spots on both feet.
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
Oh good advice. I appreciate it! I will be more on top of documenting things. Thank you so much!
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u/KooBee79 5h ago
This - tell them and /or message them. All of these things would have been a phone call for collection from the daycare I work at. Believe me we know that our phone calls aren’t going to be received well!
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u/dragon34 6h ago
The first 18 months of my son's daycare journey we were sicker than I have been in my entire life. Of course most of the time he was acting completely normal but with more snot.
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u/WillRunForPopcorn 6h ago
I don't think the daycare did anything wrong here, but I know how incredibly frustrating it is. My son is 19 months old, started daycare at 12 months, and we have all been sick at least every other week (plus I'm pregnant, so that's been fun!). My husband and I both work from home and have flexible schedules, and even so, it's been incredibly difficult with how often our son has had to stay home from daycare. I honestly have no idea how parents who go into the office do it. And it feels like we are spending a million dollars every month on daycare just for him to have to stay home!! It's the worst.
The US is not set up for working parents. It's not fair.
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
Thank you for responding. I agree it is just frustrating because of how often we are sick. Seems like there is never a dull moment. Like I said, I know it will pass as we get older but goodness right now I feel in the thick of it.
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u/WillRunForPopcorn 6h ago
Me too! Everyone says it gets better so I’m choosing to believe them. Can your partner take time off, too? You guys can alternate, maybe?
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
My husband does his best to help. However he is a manager and has some less flexibility. I hope it gets better for both of us! Best wishes!
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u/pammob16 6h ago
To be fair, they are concerned and want the best for your child. They are not doctors and while they do see lots of kids and sickness, they are helping your child and protecting the other children. My husband had to pick up our 4yo last week bc the teacher thought he had pink eye. Turns out it was a stye (not contagious). It still happens as they get older but it is much less frequent!
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
I do know this, and I do like his teachers. But goodness, these past few weeks are kind of rough. I just want me baby to be well and I also want to be well by extension. I think I am a tad unrealistically frustrated too because we haven’t really seen people so I know all these sicknesses come from daycare and it wears on me. Thanks for listening to my rant.
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u/pammob16 6h ago
For sure! It is so hard and isolating. Please feel free to rant - I did not intend to undermine what you are going through! I didn't make plans or do anything for multiple years bc whenever I tried to do something, someone was inevitably sick and I was always playing catch up. You're doing great and just remember it will get better!
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u/acciocalm 5h ago
Honestly OP - those are all reasons I’d want a kid to be sent home from daycare.
I do agree with the previous commenter - if they see the sleep thing again, ask them to video so you can show the doc.
Very different situation but my neighbor and her doctor were convinced for months that the school was wrong about her ten year old having seizures - they were very subtle and almost always at school. But he was - and it took a long time to get him proper treatment as a result.
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u/pottersprincess 6h ago
I mean the runny nose and exhaustion are signs pointing to HFM. So it makes sense they would call you for that.
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
To be fair, If my nine month old was sent home every time they had a runny nose and were resisting sleep because they want to play. We might as well just stay home everyday.
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u/GuadDidUs 6h ago
I'm sorry, I remember crying in the daycare lobby after we were home with norovirus for a week when they told me if his stool is loose at all, they're calling me.
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u/WorksInPro 6h ago
There was one time when our daycare was like, he absolutely has fifths disease. I said no, he had that last year and it's a once-and-done thing, he has heat rash from playing outside in this heat wave. Daycare director found a page on wikipedia that said it is technically, throughout the history of humanity, possible to have it twice. My kid is apparently exceptional in this regard. I took off, picked him up, took him to the doctor, and she was like no of course not, you can't get it twice, this is heat rash because he's been outside in a heat wave. I took him back the next day with a lengthy note. I appreciate that my doctor hates having her own time wasted!
Do not even get me started on the lice scares, though.
But it does get better. We didnt have a single sick day in all of pre-k 4.
You can even learn to sort of game the system a bit...not ever breaking their rules, of course. But if I saw my son cough in the morning when I had a chiller day at work, I'd keep him home to recuperate before it got worse, knowing that it would be better for him to be off that one day versus risking a 48-hour absence later in the week if he ran a temp.
(I will tell you one funny story...when he was like 6 months old and had only been in daycare for a month, it was right in the middle of covid so they were checking temps five times a day to be safe, and they called me in a panic. "You son has a temperture of 108!" "No thats impossible." "No he does, we're here, come get him!" So I'm sort of freaking out but knowing int he back of my mind there must be some kind of miscommunication. I go to get him and they say again that he's at 108. I said really calmly "if he was at 108 he would be dead. We would be at the hospital. Can you please write it out on the medical form?" Guys, they meant 100.8.)
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u/barriobruja 6h ago
I would like to point out, maybe ask your pediatrician for some extra tests. Are you noticing any symptoms or things that are off? I only say this because my bub was having trouble and had some concerning behavior, i thought well maybe it’s xyz… turned out my bub has a brain mass and we didn’t know. We just thought my bub was teething or that his daycare providers were exaggerating some symptoms but it took us to push the doctors for extra testing for them to figure it out finally.
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
That is an interesting idea. I tried to push about allergies the other day and she told me baby’s cannot have allergies to weather and shut they down. We are seeing an ENT about the ear infections. We have had no other real sicknesses besides pink eye once when we first started and a near constant stream of colds.
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u/barriobruja 4h ago
Ok that makes sense and sorry to have such a heavy comment. I just know i wish i would’ve pushed my baby’s care team more but seems like you’re doing great with seeing the ENT , best of luck!
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u/ZestyLlama8554 5h ago
I'm so sorry. It does get better, but it will definitely suck for a bit!
When my oldest started daycare, the first year was atrocious. We were all sick. All. The. Time. Lol since then we have only had normal levels of sickness. My oldest is almost 5, and I have a 2yo.
Edit: both kids in daycare and the second one didn't get the same wave of sickness.
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u/purplepeanut40 6h ago
Can they not just send a message instead of calling? Not sure what to make of most of it because I get that they need to make sure, but the “breathing weird” could literally be like a stuffy nose??? The rash I find ridiculous especially if he was outside. Most likely from more energy exertion than normal and the heat. Happens to mine all the time and then goes away. Guess what my daycare did? Took a photo, sent it to me and asked if I had seen it before or noticed it this morning. Nope but let’s keep an eye on it. It was gone by the time I picked her up.
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u/Suzune-chan 6h ago
He did have a stuffy nose when he was “breathing weird” by the time my husband got to pick him up, they had changed the story to kind of a hiccuping sound. I have heard him make it before when he has a stuffy nose. They didn’t detect anything like blue lips or hard to wake up because they easily arose him. The doctor said we need to ask what else they observed because we had a test done of his lungs, blood, and ox levels and everything came back fine. I feel like the rash will work itself out. I went to check on him at my lunch and he was sleepin, he had a few small spots. I told them to let me know if it gets worse. Since the original call to come see them, he has had a bottle and they changed his diaper so it must be better since they didn’t call again.
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u/khrystic 5h ago
I “work” remotely. My performance has been awful at work since my daughter started daycare over a year ago. I got a lower than inflation raise. It is what is it.
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u/ljr55555 5h ago
One thing that got me so mad is that they'd always call me and only call my husband as like a last resort if they thought the zombie apocalypse happened and there were only like thirty thousand humans left on earth. I felt a LOT less flaky when I was only getting called half the time. We ended up setting up a google voice number and forwarding it to my husband or my phone based on who was "in charge" today. That meant a day with an important meeting wouldn't be interrupted. And my "got an emergency, gotta go" was 50% what it had been when I was the only one getting calls.
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u/Independent_Cry9119 3h ago
I feel you. Our youngest who is 14 months is allergic to dairy and when he gets dairy on accident his main symptom is 💩 and a lot of it frequently for about a week until it clears his system. Ive had so many days off because of diarrhea when its really his body trying to get rid of dairy.
Ive had to ask him to be fed away from other kids for lunch and snack time because well what kid doesnt want to steal goldfish from their neighbor.
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u/Any-Forever3330 2h ago
I feel like this is all normal unfortunately. Our son was constantly sick since he started daycare (at 1 yo) until 4. This last year of preschool we got hit hard with the flu and other bad colds but he was able to start riding out the smaller colds. I hear elementary age is when it finally gets better.
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u/CapableFruitLoops 56m ago
Why was he on pink eye meds already because he threw up?
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u/Suzune-chan 11m ago
He had a borderline ear infection and they wanted to be proactive because my son has trouble draining his ears.
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u/legendarysupermom 4h ago
We switched centers cause of it...EVERY SINGLE DAY this center had some new issue...then they started calling daily saying he "looked sick" or "had a fever" ....would get home and no fever and would play normal happy as a clam! It came to a head when my youngest started...he ended up with diaper rash 5 days in....this rash was the bane of my fucking existence! 8 doctors visits 2 urgent cares and countless phone calls cause daycare was UP MY ASS and clearly felt I wasnt doing enough...except every weekend wed do half hour changes and alternating powder Nd various creams and by Saturday it was better by Sunday almost gone and by time id get him monday itd be back to bleeding....they ended up calling cps over it...nothing happened and cps actually turned it around on them for being constantly out of ratio and leaving kids to cry for hours...we pulled them right after...been with new center a year and have gotten 4 calls the whole year all were legit...id find a new place
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u/Expensive-Ad-797 6h ago
This is why I use a home based daycare. They only send my child home for serious reasons.
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u/Dandylion71888 6h ago
The first one, ask them if it happens again to get a video before waking him up. It might be legitimate but not observed while the dr was seeing him. Videos are invaluable tools.
Third one is fair. Too many parents send their kids with pink eye. Because of that my kids needed to go on stronger and stronger antibiotics because his whole class was passing pink eye around. He was miserable.
It does get better but it takes time. They have to build immunity.