Farm animal disease

Ingrid never gets sick.  She's like the Bruce Willis character from "Unbreakable."  I've had the Norovirus and several sinus colds/infections in the last 13 months and she's always healthy.  It could be the amazing breast milk business, or maybe luck.  Erik's maternal grandma, however, was born in the 19th century, lived through two world wars, moved from Sweden to Chicago and didn't die until she was 97, so I'm hoping Ingrid just got those genes.

Four weeks ago, Ingrid started going to PMO, Parent's Morning Out.  This is a Southern thing.  Baptist and Methodist churches around the city have very affordable mini-daycare/play-schools for four hours each morning. Ingrid goes on Mondays, and this has allowed me some time to work on deadlines and also clean the toilet without Ingrid eating Clorox wipes. It's very nice, even though I've been told Ingrid hogs a teacher and cries a lot when she's not being held. Ingrid's ego needs a lot of stroking.

Anyway, last week I heard another mom explain to the PMO boss that her son (who's in Ingrid's class) had a fever over the weekend but was now fine.  The boss said he could come for the day.  Fast forward to Friday.  Ingrid has been crabby all week, and now she's crying and poking inside her mouth with her fingers.  The dreaded molars.  I give her some icy chew toys and ignore it.  Later, Erik gives her a bath and asks me if I saw "all the red marks on her butt."  Now, in addition to never being sick, Ingrid has never had diaper rash, so I assume Erik is just dramatically identifying a common problem. I peak at her bum, and am horrified by what I see.  Those cute cellulite cheeks covered in blisters, and blisters on the soles of her feet, and one on her wrist. Thirty seconds of googling leads me to the diagnosis: Hand, Foot, & Mouth Disease.  First, let me say that name disgusts me.  It sounds like something industrially farmed poultry gets.  Second, wtf? Our daughter is bathed nightly and attacked with wipies throughout the day.  And she never gets sick!

Not 48 hours after Erik saw Ingrid's rash we get an email from the PMO boss.  There's been an outbreak at the school.  Unfortunately, HFMD is very contagious, and typically babies get a mild fever for a few days and THEN breakout in the telltale blisters, so parents often allow them to go to school or daycare assuming they're fine and/or teething. Instead, they're contagious little farm animal disease time bombs. HFMD isn't that dangerous, and Ingrid is on the mend, but it's still really gross.

I don't know which little snot-nosed baby belongs to the mother I heard talking to the boss, but I'll withhold blame for now. Ingrid is a finger-sucker (she sucks her Pointer upside down in her mouth, the "Upstairs" cousin to the plebeian "Downstairs" thumb-sucker), so she probably touches a lot of crap and gets the germs in her trap in the blink of an eye.