Daycare – A Cesspool of Germs

Welcome to Ben’s Chronicles

Hello! I’m Ben from EINSURANCE. Trust me, I know there are plenty of things we’d both probably rather be doing than discussing insurance. But although insurance gets a bad rap, it does have its benefits; especially when you find the right coverage and carrier.

Unfortunately, throughout my life I have had a knack for being at the wrong place, at the right time. Given my gravitational pull toward bad luck, I wanted to share a few of my life experiences with you in hopes that my bad luck could benefit you. So, bear with me over the upcoming weeks, because I’ll be sharing little nuggets I’ve learned through navigating the insurance world. If my mishaps and theories don’t directly help answer any of your insurance related questions, I promise they’ll make you laugh, albeit at my expense…

If you would like me to discuss a specific topic, feel free to email me at [email protected].

Today our topic is:

Daycare Stories

Undoubtedly, one of the best days of a person’s life may involve bringing a little one into this planet. For those of us lucky enough to have done so, you know the anxiety, excitement, gratitude, and shear fear that comes along with such a feat. One of the decisions new parents are presented with is how do they continue care for the new member of their family, as mom and dad transition back to their ‘normal’ lives, i.e. work. Some are lucky enough to have a grandmother or other family member babysit their newborn. Others may sacrifice one of the parent’s time and have them stay home in lieu of continuing to work. The remaining new parents take a number at a nearby daycare and hope that a position opens up in the near term. My wife and I were in this last bucket.

There’s a waitlist

We ran an interviewing process for potential daycares as soon as we found out we were pregnant. We quickly found that the daycare business is booming. In fact, the waitlists can go as far out as 2+ years. Furthermore, most daycare centers openly suggest for couples to throw their name on the waitlist as soon as they plan on attempting to get pregnant. In our case, we were extremely lucky. Our second choice of daycare opened up a month before our little bundle of joy was scheduled to be born. Given daycare has a minimum age limit of six weeks, we could have passed on the open spot and tried our luck but decided to secure the spot and pay the months up until our child was able to attend. We were happy we made that choice, as the baby officially entered the world three weeks early.

As many of you may already know, the first few weeks post labor are a haze. Mother is in recovery, everyone wants to swing by to show support, and us fathers are simply hanging by a thread. Fear of not feeding, changing or simply attending to the new member of the family properly is constant. As a result, everyone in the home is typically mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. As the weeks add up, you begin to get the hang of everything and if you’re lucky, reach a rhythm. Just as you reach this rhythm though, it’s time for daycare. We allowed our enfant to enter daycare at six weeks, begrudgingly. On one hand my wife and I both wanted to re-enter our work lives, and knew we needed assistance with watching our child, but the parental part of both us also didn’t want to leave our child with anyone. The result was us each visiting the daycare multiple times throughout the day until we were comfortable. It turns out the separation tends to be more painful for the parents than the enfants; at least it was in our case.

Just when we’re in the clear

We eventually reached a routine that worked for everyone. In fact, our child’s development increased exponentially, given throughout most of the day she was interacting with several different enfants, small children, and teachers. Not to mention the actual curriculum they have for enfants. Just as we were getting comfortable with our routine, the daycare threw a curve ball at us. No one really speaks about this, but enfants are crawling all day around perhaps the dirtiest part of any room; the floor. While doing so, they are also interacting, touching, coughing and sneezing on each other.

Needless to say, our child was hit with her first virus weeks into daycare. At the time our child became sick, she had only visited the pediatrician on scheduled appointments. However, after her irritable nights of crying, sneezing and coughing we had no choice. We made our first impromptu hospital visit. Our pediatrician did everything short of openly laugh at us when we presented our child. Not only did she explain that getting sick at daycare is normal, but it could in fact benefit our child’s immune system, as her body fights off, and becomes accustomed to different viruses. Ultimately, the pediatrician gave our child a clean bill of health and schooled us parents on the rules of daycare. From then on, we not only recognized the extrinsic benefits of daycare through things like their curriculum and social interaction, but also the intrinsic benefits of inoculating children to the world of germs and viruses.

Now that we understand daycare isn’t just a place for learning, it’s also a cesspool for germs, we no longer visit the doc at every sneeze or cough. Instead, we simply have a grandmother swing by and spend some good old fashion one on one time with our daughter for the day. Typically, she’s as right as rain by the morning. By no means do we advocate foregoing the hospital. After all, you have health insurance for that very reason. However, now that we have been armed with pertinent information regarding daycares, viruses, and how they can impact our child, we now are better equipped to assess what’s pediatrician or grandma worthy!