Mommies do not get sick. It’s a rule. Oh, don’t look for it in
your handy-dandy
”
What to Expect When You Have a Kid and Don’t Know What The Heck
To Do With it
”
book.
Mommies do not get sick. It’s a rule. Oh, don’t look for it in your handy-dandy “What to Expect When You Have a Kid and Don’t Know What The Heck To Do With it” book. They don’t tell you the ugly truth – moms are not allowed to be sick, even if they do have a doctor’s note.
Oh, we’re allowed to catch germs, of course. Bacteria and viruses are allowed to invade our bodies. But we’re not allowed to indulge them by doing something frivolous like staying in bed and drinking plenty of fluids.
So naturally, we moms try to avoid getting sick. This isn’t easy. We live with children, who everyone knows are walking, talking, coughing Petri dishes who bring home every germ imaginable. It does not matter how many times we wash our hands. It doesn’t matter how many counters and sinks we wipe down with anti-bacterial towlettes. Frankly, we could shower with Purel and we would still be exposed to germs.
But, as every mommy of a 2-year old knows, just because you aren’t allowed to do something, doesn’t mean you’re not going to do it anyway. The problem is, when mommies get sick, all heck breaks loose. I know this from experience. I have spent the last two weeks being sick.
On the first day, I tried to rest. Now this sounds easy. I mean, it was a Friday and Junior was at school. So I could look forward to at least six hours of pure, uninterrupted sleep. Except that Harry was also sick.
Now you can’t have two people sick at the same time. It’s difficult to sync up your symptoms. You have one person with a fever going up – one with a fever coming down. One person is sniffling constantly, the other is coughing. One is freezing, the other is kicking the covers off.
And neither gets any rest.
So by the time Junior came home from school, neither of us had slept and we were just getting sicker. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a household with two sick parents and a healthy, active 7-year old. It’s pure hell. For one thing, the child wants to take care of you. Now this sound nice, but what it really means is that the child is taking this opportunity to do things you normally don’t allow him to do – like use the just-sharpened chef’s knife to cut up bologna sandwiches.
So I got up. I figured I’d have to be dressed anyway to take Junior and whatever fingers he cut off to the ER. This was a big mistake. You see, two days later, Harry was well and I was on my way to being diagnosed with walking pneumonia.
At that point, I figured I had to slow down and rest. So I tried. The problem is, I’m the mom. And apparently, even though Junior, Harry and I have lived in this house for nearly five years – they don’t know where anything is. So I was woken constantly to find bread, Cold Eeze, Junior’s soccer uniform, the coffee bean grinder and Junior’s clean underwear.
And then there was the one night I took the prescribed cough medicine – and had hallucinations. At least I hope that they were hallucinations and that there really aren’t several large elephants living in my bedroom curtains.
But Mommy is much better now – and just in time. Junior-the-human-Petri-dish is home sick today. So the vicious cycle starts again. I think I’d better go hide that cough medicine. I don’t want those elephants moving into Junior’s room.
