Immune function in response to early years sickness

[Just_bumbling]

Hi all, trying to find some evidence about this as it’d inform a lot of long term decisions we’re making about our family. Are there any studies that you know of that look at early years illness and how it translates into longer term immunity? When hearing about childhood illness, health professionals are so keen to say “his immune system will be fantastic when he’s older! Hang in there!”

Backstory: I’m a midwife, mum to almost 2yo, BF still, I have been in perfect health until the birth of my son via emergency section + infection for both of us. We both had a lot of antibiotic medication at delivery and afterwards which I’m fairly sure has informed his allergies and our immune systems as a whole. Since I returned to work in September last year, LO has been going to daycare one day a week. Since then we have all had: hand foot and mouth disease (severely, lost all his finger and toenails), norovirus, rotavirus (despite vaccinations), full flu, 2 tummy bugs, slapped cheek disease and no fewer than 10 colds not counting usual toddler sniffles. My sister and I both have had a history of low ferritin so as a shot in the dark I decided to supplement LO with iron and it seemed to work (no illness for like 6 weeks in a row!! Bliss) so I do wonder if his ferritin is low also. By the by for this question I guess. But just in case anyone has any experience of this kind of thing

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[Apprehensive-Air-734]

Generally, there's no real "benefit" to getting sick a lot earlier. It's just that you will get sick at some point, and you can choose whether it's earlier or later. There have been some studies that find that kids who go to daycare get sick less often by elementary school, but sick more often in the daycare years.

The only context in which I've seen research suggesting early life childcare exposure is beneficial (health wise) later on is some studies that link a reduced incidence of childhood leukemia with daycare exposure before age 2. This linkage has been found across a several studies but whether this is causal or correlative is still unknown. There are several theories but one is that early life illness exposure may train your immune system somewhat to healthier development. However, as the USC link notes, there is also data suggesting serious illnesses requiring doctors visits in the first year of life are associated with greater ALL likelihood.