How do ya’ll handle infant childcare in regards to Covid? Trying to figure out if me and my partner should put our less than 6 month old into daycare or not. Really really worried about exposing him and us to repeat infections. But my partner and I both work full time almost entirely in person. I think I could swing a remote job with childcare help from grandparents (who are vaxed, but don’t mask and travel a lot :/) potentially. Kinda leaning towards that especially since hearing the news that Covid vaccines might be banned in good ol’ AmeriKKKa by the time we can get it for them. Not feeling great about going out of the country for it and potentially getting detained at the border on the way back either.
And once our kid is old enough to go to school, is virtual maybe worth it? I know not seeing other kids/teachers in person is not great, but neither are the long term health complications from getting Covid constantly. Hoping maybe I can find some cool parents that also care about Covid to meet up with, but I’m not holding my breath for that.
I look my baby in the eyes every morning when they give me a big dumb gummy smile and I just want to do the best I can. I don’t want them to get sick, I don’t want them to be isolated completely from any peers, I love them so goddamn much. I just don’t even know what doing my best looks like in a country that would rather let its most vulnerable die out of sight than mandate even the most basic precautions.
This shit sucks.
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Yeah it’s a nightmare for COVID cautious parents.
Your baby should have some protection from COVID if you and your partner were vaccinated while pregnant. So that’s something.
If you could find a daycare that has HEPA filters (or a diy CR box) running, or are willing to run them, or could get your grandparents to run HEPA air filters, it would cut down on risk. Being able to open the windows on top of this would help.
Your grandparents are probably the safest bet, if you can trust them to not ignore signs of a cold coming on. You still risk asymptomatic transmission, but might have to accept that amount of risk.
Outside of COVID waves, like the one we are in now, there is less risk being around a few people provided they don’t dismiss signs of illness as “just allergies”. Less people, less risk, so it depends on how many kids are in the daycare you find.
Once your kid is older, hopefully better vaccines are available, but who knows what these assholes will do. They might ban masks next
Some places have alternate school programs available with smaller class sizes and different learning arrangements which might be an option. A friend has a kid going to one of the alternate learning programs and they love it. It’s a small class and it’s only half days with a lot of self directed learning, which suits their kid well. Seems to be the place where a lot of neurodivergent kids end up and thrive, which is cool.
The kid started highschool when COVID started, and once they were forced back into classrooms they started wearing an n95 and they haven’t been sick with anything since.
There are a few other kids in the school who also mask, and their classmates are cool about it so no one thinks it’s that remarkable. Some kids aren’t so lucky. At a certain point it will be up to your kid to do what they think is right, and what social pressures they are facing, and you will have to accept their decision. Just do your best to inform them.
If masking is a no go, you can try nasal sprays, which don’t have much data on effectiveness, but it’s something. Anecdotally I know people who use only nasal sprays and HEPA filters and staying up to date on the vaccine, and that’s been enough to prevent symptomatic infections of anything for about a year so far.
If you haven’t yet, get an rsv vaccine for your kid, too.
Good luck.
Just got the first round of RSV and a bunch of other ones too! They’re all loaded up with the Bill Gates microchips. Kinda wild there are oral ones now, or maybe those have been around for a while and I just didn’t know it.
That’s good to hear about alternate school stuff, knowing this kid’s parents there’s a decent chance of some form of neurodivergence. Kinda wish I had attended something like that growing up. And we’ll for sure be investing in some HEPA filters since keeping the windows open usually isn’t something we can do around these parts.
Seeing yours and FishLake’s response has really cut down on my anxiety and given me a plan, thank you.
