Tuesday, February 18, 2014

When sickness comes to town

Parenting is tiring. There are no two ways about it, it is really tiring. Not in a bad way, it is just that kids have sooooo much energy and kind of feed off attention. That takes some getting used to but every parent gets there and the rewards are worth every bit of it. It is a balance of yours and your children's needs, but you know at the end of the day you will have a bit of time to sit back and relax for a few minutes, or go to the toilet on your own without waiting for a scream/crash/cry, so inevitably you spend your day dedicating every moment to your children's needs. Just as it should be in my opinion.

For us we have a 3 (and a half) year old and a 7 month old. That's a lot of attention and care to give, but I know there are families of 6,7,8 out there so don't get me wrong - I know we have it easy. Where that balance becomes difficult is when someone gets sick.

If it is one of the adults you have to keep the kids away from that parent. The other parent is then left taking care of the kids on their own all day.  Manageable.

Then suppose one of the kids gets sick too. So one adult is sick, and one child. This means the other parent is caring for two sick people and one healthy and trying to quarantine the sick away form the healthy. Awkward, but manageable in the short term.

Now let's up the game a bit. Two sick adults. One sick child, one healthy child. Now you have to care for a child while staying away from them. You are likely to be up all night with the sick child. And you are battling your own sickness too. Bloody hard.

Next let's not go to the all sick step, but rather what happens in reality. One parent gets better. Sick child gets better. Healthy child picks up sickness from remaining sick parent. Remaining sick parent gets well just in time for healthy parent to pick up sickness from the now sick child. The sick child gets well, but the healthy child picks up sickness from the now sick parent. Take that loop and repeat for 5 or 6 weeks and you have exactly what is happening in our house.

And do you know the funny thing? Apart from being very worn out, we're all having great fun together. That's the great thing about families - being together is all you need. Still, I really want my health back thank you very much!

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