Parenting in Times of COVID-19, Part 1: She’s Positive

At the end of the first day, I’m exhausted. And I’m not the one sick… Yet.

René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH
6 min readMay 24, 2022

My daughter started having a runny nose last Friday. I chalked it up to allergies and took her to daycare. She had no other complaints, and my own allergies have been going strong. The car is covered in pollen every morning. She has also had no fever, though — being my daughter — she gets warm at any exposure to the sun.

Saturday, we went to her soccer practice, and she was perfectly normal then. She ran around without any issues, stopping once in a while for me to wipe her nose and drink more water. The temperature was in the 90s for the first time this year, and we could feel it.

A little girl plays with a soccer ball around some orange cones on the ground.

On Sunday, we drove three hours up to Pennsylvania for a K-9 trial competition. A young woman watched my daughter while a colleague and I took photographs of the pups. My daughter and her babysitter watched for a while, then they went to the playground just outside the community center where the event took place. I was free to take all the pictures I could, and I got some good pictures even with the crappy indoor lighting.

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René F. Najera, MPH, DrPH

DrPH in Epidemiology. Public Health Instructor. Father. Husband. "All around great guy."