What do working parents do...

... when their kids are sick? Is there some "sick kids club" that I don't know about? Or do most parents have a daytime sitter on retainer, just in case their child gets ill?

I've been at my new job now for two months. I haven't worked a full 40 hours yet except for my very first week, between my daughter's illnesses, my own illness, and two federal holidays. It's frustrating, especially since I'm an hourly contractor which means no workee, no pay-ee. But even if I did have paid vacation and sick time, I'd STILL be in the negative, since I don't know many companies that give you 50 days of leave a year. Oh, and my wife has also stayed home with Little Miss a few times in the past two months. But even though she has paid leave, she's used all hers up already with her own illnesses this winter. Plus, she works farther away (so she can't run home when daycare calls) and she currently makes more than I do, so when someone needs to take leave without pay, it's me.

So after three days of being out of work with LM (Fri. and Tues. for me and Mon. for Jen), I made a decision -- LM had to go to daycare today. So I doped her up on baby Motrin and once her fever came down, shipped her off. Is that really so bad? I mean I really doubt she's still contagious after all this time. She hasn't had any symptoms (other than being generally clingy) since Sunday, her appetite is back, and her fever was just about gone last night. Hopefully all she needed was one more dose of Motrin to get her over the hump. If not, I'll be getting the call from day care in the next couple of hours.

** UPDATE **

Yep, almost exactly four hours after dropping her off at daycare, I got the call. In addition to the fever, they said she hadn't stopped crying since I dropped her off. I felt terrible!

I was able to get a doctor's appt for that night. They ruled out both strep throat and an ear infection (although I question the latter, since she seemed to be holding her right ear a lot) and eventually suspected a urinary tract infection. So how do you get a urine sample from an 11-month-old? Well the nurse-practitioner decided she didn't want to do the catheter unless absolutely necessary, so she tried the "taped on plastic baggie" method. (I'm sure there's a medical term for this?) But after 15 minutes, still no pee. So she sent us home and told us to come back the next day.

The next day (Thursday) we treked down to the doctor's other office (they couldn't squeeze us in at the office close to home). This time they used the catheter and said it certainly looked like a urinary tract infection but they would send it for a culture. In the mean time, LM got an antibiotic injection and a prescription for more, and was told to bring her back in again Friday if she still had a fever.

Friday she still had a fever and was still generally miserable, so I took her back in for another injection. However, I am happy to say that by Friday afternoon she was starting to show significant improvement. She was still very clingy for all of the Christmas weekend, but by Tuesday she was happy to go back to day care.

Now getting back to the original theme of this post (having to take time off work for sick kids), it really irks me that all this time she was forced to stay home because of a urinary tract infection, which is not contagious!