Worked in a daycare. One of my coworkers working in the same infant room as me had a very tiny very premature baby. He was weeks old but still TINY. If you don’t know, premature babies have bad immune systems. Their bodies are preoccupied with trying to function right so fighting things off is harder and they can be hospitalized quick.

Nobody but her was allowed to hold or tend to him and that was her rules and I respected them. I, honestly was scared to touch him. I was so afraid that I would get him sick and put him in the hospital. So I was more than glad with her rules. I can’t remember if I had just got over something or not but I remember I felt crappy one day, he was a few months old at the time and she finally felt safe enough to hold him out to me and almost placed him in my arms and I wasn’t expecting it so I quickly reacted with “NO!” And backed up from him. She was like

and said “I’ve been feeling crappy, I’m so scared I’ll get him sick.” And she said “oh okay😳” and walked away.

I felt SO BAD at the way I reacted to him, felt like I made her feel like her baby freaked me out. If the world didn’t have sickness in it I would have held that baby as much as she let me but I was scared. I ended up explaining in detail later why I reacted the way I did. I randomly think about how bad I felt about my reaction to her trying to hand him to me 😭

And to add: because of her rules and what our boss allowed her to do (first few weeks he stayed in the office with our boss) and with all the precautions she took, he really never did get sick from daycare