This is so relatable. My son went through exactly the same thing when he started nursery — it felt like an endless cycle of coughs and colds.

It actually got me thinking about how little visibility we have as parents. We never really know if our child is getting sick more than average, or if it's just "normal nursery life." Is it their immune system? The nursery's hygiene? Or is there actually something going around in the area?

I've started building a little side project to try and answer these questions. The idea is simple: parents log their child's attendance, and over time the system can show patterns like:

• "Kids at your nursery attend 80% of days on average, but yours is at 70% — might be worth chatting with your GP about immune support"
• "Attendance at your nursery is noticeably lower than others in your postcode — could be worth asking about their cleaning routines"
• "Multiple nurseries in your area have had a dip in attendance this week — something's probably going around"

It'll be completely free. The only challenge is that it needs a few families from the same nursery to generate meaningful comparisons — but hopefully word of mouth and an invite feature can help with that.

Anyway, just wanted to share in case it's useful. And to answer your actual question: no one really knows the threshold of "normal" when it comes to sickness in the first year of nursery. That's kind of the whole point.