In my humble opinion, having a sick kid is one of the hardest parts of being a parent, at least in terms of the day-to-day problems. It's not just that it's hard to watch someone you love feeling miserable, it's the logistics, too. If both parents work, who stays home with the ailing individual? Or are they lucky enough to have family nearby who are willing to risk being infected themselves?
Then there's the whole handwashing thing: not just yours, but theirs, too. Usually to the point where your skin will crack and bleed profusely if you wash them one more time. And the sanitizing... ugh! I can barely keep up with normal, everyday cleaning, much less disinfecting everything my child could have come into contact with or potentially breathed on.
When you have more than one child, though, the difficulties of a sick kid can become reason for panic. How do you keep the first sick kid from becoming the second, third or fourth sick kid? Suddenly cracked and bleeding hands are a small price to pay for avoiding an epidemic. The dreaded cleaning becomes the only line of defense against the dreaded "germies."
And, if by some miracle, you only have one sick child amongst your bunch, the logistical nightmares can multiply exponentially. This was my situation a couple of days ago, and the reason behind today's rant.
I was out with my two youngest yesterday (Andrew needed a "cool dude haircut") when my cell phone rang. I don't have call display (I know, dark ages, right? I am also severely deficient when it comes to texting skills) so I answered with a pleasant, if somewhat confused (no one EVER calls my cell phone) "Hello?"
"Where are you?" my loving husband's voice demanded. I informed him that I was at the grocery store, in a somewhat put off tone, given his lack of pleasantries.
"I've got Emma on my cell phone," he informed me. "She says she's sick." And so it began. I paid for the groceries, loaded them and the two youngest into the van, all while trying to get them to hurry by telling them that Emma was sick (which only resulted in hearing about 15 choruses of "Emma sick?" from Andrew) and drove over to the school to pick up my sick kid.
I put her on the couch for the afternoon while her brother and sister slept (and me, too, truth be told - I am, after all, VERY pregnant and VERY tired) and all was well. She didn't look very good, but no actual puking occurred, so that was positive. By bedtime, though, she still didn't look as if she was going to be up for school the next morning. Problem was, Charlotte had nursery school the next morning.
When we lived in town, this wouldn't have been a big deal. I would've just loaded everyone into the van, taken Charlotte to nursery school, then brought Andrew and Emma back home until pick-up time, when I would've loaded everyone up again to pick up Charlotte, and then we'd be done for the day.
But we don't live five minutes from the nursery school anymore. It's a 30-40 minute drive each way for a 2 1/2 hr class. I drop her off at school, then find some way to keep Andrew and I occupied until pick-up time. Usually on Thursday mornings I take Andrew to "Little Feet Fitness and Fun", a preschool "gym." Obviously this wasn't going to work with a sick 8 year old. I really didn't know what I was going to do with her. Even if we didn't go to Little Feet (and Andrew woudl NOT have been happy at missing his favourite outing of the week) where could I possibly hang out for 2 hours with a sick kid?
I lucked out in that my father-in-law (who lives all of 400ft away) was okay with me dropping her off there for the morning, but I didn't actually find this out until about 30 minutes before we had to leave in the morning. I was still stressing about what on earth I was going to do right up until that moment.
Emma's mostly better now, although she still looks pretty rough. She went to school yesterday, but I don't think she's 100% yet. Time will tell if we've managed to avoid an epidemic, though.
A mom can only hope.
0 comments:
Post a Comment