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My husband is pretty busy at work these days so whenever possible, I will stay home with the baby. BUT my husband can also work from home, so if for some reason I felt unable to stay home, he would do it. We try to share the load as much as possible!

I'm a teacher/ librarian too and most days I would be happy to take off if I still had sick days but there are days that I would fight to not miss, like if there was mandatory training that I'd have to make up after work hours later or a big project day in class that a substitute wouldn't really be able to do.

But just being a teacher doesn't give him a pass to not ever take a sick day--- many teachers are women and they are tr primary "take sick days" parent. Female teachers make it work all the time, so if it's not a special day at work for him then he should suck it up and get a sub. Of course--- a teacher can't call in last minute or you won't get a sub and that's a good way to make your principal hate you.

We have always take turns taking off when LO is sick. But lately I'm in a bad spot at work so DH has been for about the past month.

With you starting a new job I def think DH should be taking off a bulk of the time!

N hasn't really been sick yet but I am always the one to be off for appointments or if he is sick because I have the flexibility in my job. I can work from home if need be. DH on the other hand is an assistant manager at a family restaurant and can't get away as easy.

We take turns. I don't think it's right for one person to bear the brunt of depleted sick days!

@mrsjazz: How bad is the cold? Fever? Runny nose? LO very uncomfortable?

LO isn't here yet, but with a dog and a house we have occasions where this comes up for us too. We're lucky that we can work from home, but neither of us likes to do it too often. When someone needs to be at home for the day, we just have a discussion and see who can do it - did one of us just work from home recently? Do either of us have any important meetings that we need to be in the office for? And we've both started new jobs in the past year, so we take that into consideration too, that we need to balance it between us so that we don't look bad as new employees.

Personally, with a new job I would want DH to take on the responsibility for staying home for at least a couple months, especially if he's never done it before.

If the baby is just sick, we send her. If she has a fever, one person stays home. For the most part, in her first year, my husband stayed home. I had no PTO left after maternity leave so, I had to take unpaid leave if I took off.

If the baby was too sick to go (clingy, whiny, really miserable) we would keep her home and he would again stay home with her.

My thought is, my kid isn't the first sick kid to ever go to daycare and you can't keep a kid home just because they're "sick" or you'll never go to work.

In your case with the new job, I say it's up to your husband to stay home if the baby is too sick to go.

@mrsjazz: just coming back to this. You need to have a talk with him. Principles are very used to dealing w child illness because MOST teachers, in my experience, have kids. And every teacher I know that's married is the one to take the most days off--- your hubs really needs to suck it up and do it if you are new.

What's his reasoning for not using his sick and personal days?

Last week's croup Tuesday had both of us working from home with a sick LO. These are the moments I like the flexibility of where I work. We were able to get him to the doctor, meds, and still work during naps. The next day I worked from home and caught up on chores, etc. Usually, I'd take PTO, but didn't need to.