How can babysitters protect themselves during COVID?

[AnonymousIV]

Hello,
I have a question for medical professionals. My wife and I need marriage counseling. It will probably be more effective face to face. We have a three year old and a six year old. If we’re going to leave the house, we need a babysitter.

I am a middle school choir teacher and start teaching in person 4 days a week very soon. Even though I will be wearing a mask and my students will, I feel like this means my family poses a higher risk of infection to anyone we ask for help. Since we are most likely to have an evening appointment, that means the girls will need to be fed or put to bed. Social distancing is unlikely.

I need to know that if a friend or family member is helping us out, we are not putting them at risk of infection, especially if the people who help are my 68 year old parents.

Does anyone have advice on PPE and strategies we can use to keep our babysitters safe? Also, please list your credentials when answering my questions and thank you for your help.

[Paxiled]

My understanding having been on this site for many years is that there are no experts on here, just folks like you.  Once upon a time there was a separate part of this website that had medical professionals on it, but that's long gone.  But here's my two cents worth:  people are reporting good results at online counseling.  The important face to face is you and your wife, not your and your therapist.  I've been in therapy a lot for my anxiety problem over the years, and while getting out and going to an appointment can be helpful if you're anxious or depressed and avoiding a lot of things, it's not as important for actually getting better.  That's a crapshoot and is probably more a result of how good the particular therapist is and how hard you and your wife work at it and want it to work.  And I've got to say, if you're going to be teaching students in person, anyone who watches the news knows that middle school students aren't complying all that well.  Your babysitter is much less likely to be a problem.  As for PPE, any mask will do if it's thick enough and worn properly, so you need to test your babysitter by having them demonstrate to you they know how to wear it properly.  Finding someone in a family you know is about the best you can do with any babysitter at any time.  And your sitter will also have to agree to social distance as much as possible even if wearing a mask, just as your spit-spewing choir students will have to do, as that's about the highest risk activity going.  I'm just saying, if you're willing to do that and can figure out how to have people singing around you and not infect you then you can definitely work out the babysitter logistics.  You'll be more of an expert than the experts.  Peace.

[Paxiled]

And one other thing I just saw on the news this morning, there's a new saliva test.  I'm guessing it won't be very accurate, but it is quick, so you can have everyone tested frequently.

[AnnieBrooke]

(Paxiled, he is concerned that due to his job, he and his family might pose a risk to the babysitter, not the other way around. Especially since one set of candidates for babysitter is age 68.)

[Paxiled]

I thought that's what I tried to help with, Annie.  But the only way they can know if the babysitter has been affected is to protect the babysitter and if the babysitter has a chance of being infected already or getting infected, it works the other way around as well.  The babysitter is going to be caring for their children, and given the age of babysitters, they are very likely to be getting exposed and not to show any symptoms of it.  Right now it's the young who are spreading the virus because they are not social distancing anymore and are not wearing masks.  It's always a two-way street with covid, you protect others but you can only do that if they also protect you so you don't get it and give it to them or those they know.  Peace.

[AnonymousIV]

Thank you for responding, Paxiled. Annie is right that I am more nervous about bringing home COVID. This is especially true when it comes to my parents.
I will figure something out.

[AnnieBrooke]

Hi, unfortunately for your request for credentials, this site is a patient-to-patient forum, not a doctor-written forum. This means that although a few people who write in might be doctors or nurses, most are just an informed and interested group of participants with varying levels of knowledge. We'll be glad to give you our opinions, but that is all they are.

As an interested layperson, my comment would be that the science is not settled on any topic surrounding Covid-19, and that (perhaps except the way doctors mask and gown when they are in the ICU or emergency room), there hasn't been a "best" way identified and described to do PPE for people who will not be social distancing.

Given that you are concerned about exposure because of your job as a choir teacher, it seems like you and your wife might want to reconsider having the appointment in person, and instead try a video conference. My husband and I recently had a legal appointment done that way, and though we were passing a lot of data back and forth and the meeting took over an hour, it was surprisingly seamless and not in any way awkward or clunky.

I hope someone who writes in who happens to have medical credentials answers your question.

[AnonymousIV]

Thank you for explaining how the site works. I’m not opposed to teletherapy. I think it is harder to talk about intimate details and challenges within a marriage with your children in the same house, though. I suppose, though, that this is why I have sick time, so that I can have theses conversations while the kids are at school.