4 kita illnesses and 11 sick days: our first summer

The thermometer said 38.5 at 5:40am, in week two of the Eingewöhnung. The toddler was hot against my shoulder, and I already knew the day was gone. Kita has rules about fever; we had just learned them.

The first summer of kita is a virus parade. Nobody tells you in a way that sticks, not until the calendar shows it. Here is our honest version, logged as a list: four illnesses in ten weeks and eleven sick days, plus one night that scared us. Every kita differs, and these are one family’s numbers. The shape matters more than the values.

Here is the whole first summer at a glance.

1. The week-two fever

The first illness announced the pattern before the Eingewöhnung had even reached half days. She woke up warm on a Thursday, and I checked three times, as if the thermometer would change its mind. It did not: 38.5 at 5:40am, two sick days, June.

The kita staff said the obvious thing that week: sick days do not count. The settling-in pauses but does not reset. That sentence carried the whole month; you can find it in the Eingewöhnung post, day by day. The pediatrician’s practice answered on the second ring, and the verdict was boring. Fluids, rest, and a call back if the fever climbed. Two days home, then back to the tiny chair after a full twenty-four fever-free hours.

Where this one fails is memory. It was the scariest because it was the first, and by the third illness the same fever read as routine. That recalibration is not bravery; it is just the calendar filling up.

2. The finish-line cold

The finish-line cold arrived in late June, right as the Eingewöhnung wrapped: a runny nose, no fever, two sick days. It earns its spot on this list for being boring, which after the first fever felt like a gift. We ran the days on fluids and the sofa, and nobody called anybody.

Where it fails is the log’s honesty: it ate a full kita week for what was, medically, almost nothing. That trade never stops being the deal. Short enough to log, long enough to forget a full kita week.

3. The summer cold

The mid-July summer cold was the last illness before the Ferien: two more sick days, again without fever. It mattered for timing rather than severity, because it closed out the first half of the summer. The chart below shows what that meant for the month.

The July dip is the Ferien: two closed weeks, covered the way we planned. The Ferien post has the logistics; nobody got sick that fortnight, because nobody was in the room. The August spike is the return, and it belongs to item four.

4. Hand-foot-mouth

Hand-foot-mouth is the kita classic and the only illness of the summer that needed a name. The RKI calls it highly contagious and a regular in community care settings. It landed in early August, the second week back after the Ferien, in the same weeks as the drop-off tears. The order ran fever evening first, then spots on the hands, the feet, and in the mouth. Five sick days and about seven days of spots made it the longest line on our calendar.

Where it fails is that the name is worse than the case. The pediatrician looked once and said the word we had been dreading was a routine one. The baby caught it too, mildly: a few spots on the feet and two rough nights, without fever. We did not know it would be mild; nobody can tell you in advance. The pediatrician is the one who says it out loud, which is why the phone call rule exists. The gate-side timer sat unused that week; the gate timer post has those numbers.

How we counted these

The list is the whole summer, not a selection; the method behind the log:

• One line per illness, in the calendar: date, fever or no fever, sick days. Nothing smarter than that.
• Sick days counted only when kita was missed; Ferien days never entered the log.
• Only illnesses that stopped a kita day made the list; a Wednesday sniffle did not.
• The baby’s illnesses logged separately, since her days were home days either way.
• The pediatrician’s word settled any question of what an illness was; we did not self-diagnose.

The door rules that ran the summer

The rules that kept us sane were on the kita’s door, not in a parenting forum. Ours posted three lines, and the whole summer ran on them.

• Fever-free for 24 hours without medication before coming back.
• 48 hours after diarrhea or vomiting.
• Sick days during the Eingewöhnung pause the process. They do not reset it.
• Spare clothes in the bag, always. The second outfit is when you know.

German law stands behind the first two lines. The Infektionsschutzgesetz lists infections that keep children out of community care (§ 34 IfSG). Our kita’s rules were that law with local edits, stricter in some places and looser in others. The looser version is where I made my mistake.

The fever broke on a Friday evening. The toddler was bright-eyed by Saturday morning, and I decided the math could bend. Eighteen fever-free hours instead of the twenty-four on the door. The kita called at 11am. Listless on the carpet, the educator said, so I drove back without a word. Fever-free is not recovered. The energy returns a day later than the temperature does, which is why the twenty-four hours exist. I never cut them again.

We split the sick days the way we split everything else: whoever had the less unshiftable morning took the day. The August week fell to me. The partner was on a work trip, while the school holidays gave me the runway. The baby’s nights came with it. I would not choose the worst illness week solo again.

The week the baby caught it too

The second child turns every kita virus into a family event. Two days after the toddler’s week-two fever, the baby’s forehead was warm at 22:35.

Our pediatrician’s rule for a baby under six months is one line: any fever means a call, day or night. We called. The doctor asked how old, then how much the baby drank. Her instructions were short: measure every two hours and watch the drinking, then call again if anything changed. Nothing changed: the baby was mild by breakfast.

The slow goodbye got all the attention, but the door is only half of kita. The slow goodbye pillar post covered the ritual that got us through the morning. The viruses were the other half, the part that starts once the door closes.

Three small systems carried us through all four items, and none of them cost money. The door rules went on our fridge, which stopped us re-litigating them at 6am. The backup order was named in May, before anyone was sick: a grandparent, then whichever parent had the morning. The phone list hung next to the rules. In a fever fog, dialing a number you can see beats searching your phone.

The first year of kita is a tax on the calendar. It does end. I cannot see the toddler’s immune system getting stronger, nor will I pretend otherwise. What I can see is the log: eleven sick days, four illnesses, one diagnosis, zero emergencies. That is the whole first summer. We got through it.

Filed under kita-age; everything we’ve written is in the archive.