My wife and I stayed home from work sick this week, she on Tuesday, I on Wednesday. We have picked up slightly dissimilar colds, both fugal variations on your average winter bug. (Hers comes with fatigue and congestion, mine with a cough and nausea. Fun.) Meanwhile, our son is perfectly well, apart from a very slight bit of postnasal drip that he’s been carrying around for weeks.

Childcare, when you are sick, turns into a battle between you and your own infectious self. You can’t tend a baby without picking him up, touching his mouth and hands, or putting your face near his. Hand sanitizer isn’t practical twenty times a day; constant hand-washing may be a little better, but not foolproof. We’re even sleepier than usual, because we are kept awake by our own wheezing as well as late-night baby-tending.

What I wish I knew was whether he was susceptible at all to this virus I’ve caught. It is entirely plausible, after all, that he brought it home from daycare, or that I picked it up there, from a doorknob or other surface. If he’s been marinating in these germs all winter, and built up a fierce immunity, it’d make me a lot less uneasy about (for example) feeding him with my ungloved hands. If on the other hand he is likely to catch this nasty thing, I really do need to take steps, both to avoid putting him through it and to save his parents’ sanity. Because if he spends next week coughing and wheezing as much as I am now, it’s going to be a long hard couple of days around here.