Why Your 1 Year Old Is Constantly Sick (And What Actually Helped When I Was At My Wits’ End)
2:47 a.m. on a Tuesday, I’m cross-legged on our bathroom floor, my 13-month-old draped over my shoulder, the front of my sweatshirt soaked through with vomit. The thermometer I dropped when she lurched forward is still rolling under the vanity, and the laundry basket by the door is already piled high with three loads of bedding, pajamas, and stuffed animals that need washing. This is the fourth time she’s been sick in eight weeks, ever since she started part-time daycare. I rest my forehead on the cool edge of the bathtub and think, I am officially at my wits’ end.
Before this streak started, I’d read all the casual posts about how first-time daycare kids get more colds, but nothing prepared me for what it feels like day to day. One week it’s a low-grade fever and a cough that keeps both of us up every 45 minutes. The next, it’s an ear infection that requires antibiotics, which gives her diarrhea, which turns into a stomach bug that she passes to me, and by the time we both feel a little better, she’s got another runny nose and a mild rash from a new virus going around the toddler room. My mom called last week and said “we didn’t have all this sickness when you were little” and I immediately felt that familiar twist of guilt – am I not cleaning enough? Should I pull her out of daycare? Is my diet bad, is her immune system broken?
I’d called the pediatrician twice already, and both times the nurse just said “it’s normal for this age” and sent me home. Which was technically true, but it didn’t help me when I was staring at another pile of dirty laundry at 3 a.m. So I texted my childhood friend who’s a pediatric nurse, the one who doesn’t sugarcoat things, and she called me back right away, even at that hour.
We talked for 20 minutes, and she asked me what I’d been doing to keep up. I told her I spend an hour every night wiping down every toy she brought home from daycare, sanitizing all the doorknobs, I weigh her every other day because she won’t eat when she’s sick and I’m scared she’s losing weight, I spend 45 minutes every middle of the night stripping the entire crib when she pees through or pukes, because I only have one extra fitted sheet. She laughed, not in a mean way, and said “first off, ‘normal’ doesn’t mean you have to suffer. Second, let’s fix the small stuff first, because the big stuff – the immune system building itself – is out of your control anyway.”
The first tip she gave me was so simple I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it: layer the crib. I already had one waterproof pad under her top fitted sheet. I went out that weekend and bought one more waterproof pad and one extra fitted sheet, for a total of $28. Now the crib goes: mattress, waterproof pad, fitted sheet, another waterproof pad, another fitted sheet. If she pukes or wets through in the night, I just yank off the top layer and leave the rest. No fumbling with a crib bumper, no carrying a wet mattress all over the house at 2 a.m. That one change cut my middle-of-the-night crisis time from 45 minutes to 3 minutes.
Next, we talked about food. I was panicking because she’d go two or three days eating almost nothing but breastmilk and a few bites of applesauce when she was sick, and I was convinced I was messing up her growth. She told me to stop weighing her at home, stop forcing crackers or yogurt or whatever “healthy” thing I thought she needed. Just keep a bottle of pediatric electrolyte solution (she said the generic Target brand is exactly the same as the name brand, for half the price) and a bag of her favorite whatever – for us that’s strawberry puffs – next to the couch. As long as she has at least one wet diaper every six hours, she’s fine. The weight will come back when she’s feeling better. I stopped obsessing over her food intake, and that took so much unnecessary stress off me.
Then we talked about all that sanitizing I was doing. I was wiping down every single toy every night, and that took a full hour every evening, leaving me so tired by the time I went to bed I could barely fall asleep even when she was asleep. She told me that all that extra sanitizing doesn’t actually cut down on sickness that much, and it just wears you out. Basic handwashing when we get home from daycare, that’s it. If a toy gets dropped on the grocery store floor, I rinse it off, but I don’t spray it with disinfectant. I don’t wipe down her lunch box every night with sanitizer wipes, just wash it with soap once a week. That freed up an hour every evening that I can use to shower or sit and drink a cold soda before bed, which makes me way more able to handle the late nights when they come.
I’ve been doing these small changes for three weeks now. We still had another stomach bug last week. She still has a little runny nose right now that won’t go away. I still haven’t folded the laundry from her last sick day that’s sitting on the couch. But it doesn’t feel like I’m drowning anymore. I realized that what I was struggling with wasn’t just the sickness itself – it was all the extra stuff I was adding to it, the guilt, the extra chores, the pressure to fix it and make it go away.
The thing no one spells out for new parents is that all this sickness for 1-year-olds is just developmental. Their immune system is doing what it’s supposed to do: learning how to fight all the common viruses that are out there, so when they’re older they get sick less often. It’s messy, it’s tiring, it doesn’t feel like progress when you’re in the middle of it, but it’s just something they have to go through. That doesn’t mean you have to grin and bear it and make yourself miserable. You can tweak the small, everyday stuff to make it easier on you.
Last Saturday, we had 48 hours of no fever, no puking, just her chasing the cat around the house and stealing bites of my toast. I took that time to get a haircut, which I hadn’t done in six months. It felt like a huge win. This morning, she woke up with a cough. I sighed, grabbed the extra tissue box I keep by the crib now, and brought her downstairs for breakfast. It’s not over. I still have days where I feel frustrated, and I still cry in the shower sometimes when I’m tired. But now I know what to do to make it manageable, and that’s enough for right now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Your 1 Year Old Is Constantly Sick (And What Actually Helped When I Was At My Wits’ End)