Feeling kind of itchy.

Every morning that I send her to daycare, I feel like I'm throwing Nora into a cesspool.

Don't get me wrong; Sue's place is relatively clean (as clean as any place which is overrun by toddlers every day) and Sue runs a fairly tight ship, making sure dishes are washed and anything that goes into mouths is scrubbed regularly. I've seen her confiscate soothers and I've seen the pile of toys sitting by the sink waiting to be cleaned. There are no untoward smells and Sue is very keen to change Nora's clothes at the first sign of a mess. Often she undergoes two wardrobe changes in a day, which is two more than I would give her at home barring a catastrophic event (i.e. barfing, shitsplosions, etc).

But the very nature of a daycare ensures that the children will get sick. And oh they get sick. Since starting daycare a mere 5.5 weeks ago, Nora's had a stomach thing, a terrible cold, and now she's got a mysterious nighttime cough.

Not only do they get sick, but there are also the unexpected (by me) side consequences of all this wonderful socialization; today Sue told me that the older sibling of one of the toddlers came home with nits. Lice. Head lice. And Sue said that she has to make sure to check all the little ones. Since we are in a relatively small community – which has definite benefits – the threat comes from three sides: Nora's in daycare with this little gal's baby brother (who is so far nit-free) but the poor little one with lice (J) is also in the same class as two of the other little girls who go to Sue's on Mondays and Fridays (V +E). One of those little girls (V) has a baby sister (C) who is with Nora at Sue's every day. And then we move up a generation: the little gal's (J's) father drives in with us some mornings, us being myself and the mother of the two sisters who go to Sue's (V +C).

So this is how it happens. This is the community illness effect. I never realized it until I had kids, but someone said to me "oh yeah, one person sends their kid to daycare sick, and hundreds of people end up catching it" and it's true, it's really true. Take a cold, for instance. You send your kid to daycare sick but maybe you didn't know it yet, maybe it was only a little sniffle when you dropped her off in the morning, but by 5 pm it's a torrent of green snot. That means that even if you keep her home the next few days, the rest of the kids could have already caught it, passed it to their siblings, their parents, classmates, the daycare provider, etc. Meanwhile you're thinking "I'm not sick yet, I can leave her with someone else and go to work" but then oh – by 5 pm you are a wreck, your skin hurts, your head is stuffed up and you have to squint to see clearly. Even if YOU take the next day off, you've likely given it to all of your close coworkers and smeared it all over the phones and keyboards, so there it is. Hundreds of people are sick. It's even worse in diseases with long, contagious incubation periods, like chickenpox.

Argh. It takes a village, but sometimes that village is beseiged by illness and needs to batten down the hatches.

That brings me back around to head lice. I hope to god my Nora doesn't get lice on her sweet little beautiful-smelling head, in her golden silky hair. My (bald) coworker told me I could always just shave off her hair but oh that thought nearly made me cry and cry. No way. Nuh-uh. If I have to buy a gold-plated lice comb and take a week off of work so I can comb her hair 12 hours a day, I will do it, but I will not shave her head. Nor will I dump pesticides all over it. I would rather quarantine her for five years than treat a baby for head lice, so I'm really not too sure what to do at this juncture. I am going to try adding a few drops of tea tree oil to her shampoo and see if that prevents them but that's not really a proven scientific method, I don't think.

My mom tells me neither my brother nor I ever had head lice. I see this as a positive by-product of being kind of a loner – maybe I never got close enough to other kids' heads to catch anything from them. And since my brother and I are 6 years apart, we didn't really stick our heads together much either. Small blessings.

I have to go now. Writing about this is making my head itchy. Tonight I am going to wash and boil everything our heads come into contact with, just in case, and spray my house down with tea tree oil.