Natalie’s Blog

Everyone told us that the first few months of daycare are filled with illness after illness because your child is being exposed to a lot more germs. Is it true? I’ll recount our daycare experience so far:

Week One (3/3/08 - 3/7/08)

The Friday of Natalie’s first week of daycare, she woke up in the middle of the night crying. I made the really, really bad mistake of sitting down next to her in her bed before turning on the lights, cause when I sat down, I realized that she had thrown up. Ewww! She threw up a few more times over the next couple of hours, requiring several pajama changes for both of us. She eventually went back to sleep and was completely fine the next day.

Week Two (3/10/08 - 3/14/08)

That week was when she had her terrible diaper rash, bad enough to require Natalie to miss daycare on Wednesday and take a trip to the doctor’s office.

Week Three (3/17/08 - 3/21/08)

Natalie only went to school on Monday of this week, because Monday night she had a mild fever. She still had a fever Tuesday morning, which meant that even if it cleared up that day, she couldn’t go to school on Wednesday, because children have to be fever-free for 24-hours to attend school. In the middle of the night Tuesday, her fever spiked to 105.6!!! She and I took a luke-warm shower, which brought it down to 103. Then the motrin finally kicked in and she was able to go back to sleep with a temperature of 102.5. We took her to the doctor for the second Wednesday in a row this morning. The doctor found that her lungs, throat, and ears were all clear. He did a blood test to check for a hidden infection, (like a urinary tract infection) which was also clear. No elevated white blood cell count or anything else to indicate a problem. So, she has a virus that we’ll let run it’s course.

Was all this sickness because she’s in daycare or just a coincidence? We’ll ever know for sure. One thing I do know is that all these absences from school are not helping Natalie adjust to being there. It’s getting a little better, but still not great.

Grandma had the brilliant idea of taking some picture of Natalie’s teachers and classmates and spending time everyday looking at them. She got the idea because Natalie loves her Aunt Katy and has always been comfortable with her, even though Natalie has only seen Katy (who lives in CA) a few times in her life. The reason? Because we have pictures of Katy that we look at and talk about. If you ask Natalie “who’s that?” she says “Taty!” In fact, she learned to say Katy well before she learning to say Grandma or Nama.

The school director and Natalie’s teachers were enthusiastic about the project and took some pictures this week. Thank goodness, because between Natalie’s illness and the school being closed for Good Friday, she’ll have a whole week before going back to school.

Here is Natalie with one of her teachers and classmates at the beginning of the day, eyes still red from crying after Mama left:

And looking calmer at the end of the day, but eyes red from her impending illness:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 19th, 2008 at 3:39 pm and is filed under Challenges, Illness, Photos, School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.