5 Mom Truths When the Household is Sick

You’re chugging along, through your family’s weekly hustle and bustle. Bus stops, work meetings, pickup lines, soccer games, homework… life is crazy. Mid-commute from dinner to dance practice, it happens. The sneeze from the back of the car followed by…

“Mom, my throat hurts.”

No. Nooooooooooo.

What mom has time for this?! Once it’s come to your attention, there is no denying it. The nasal twang in his voice. The sad little cough she seems to be building by the moment. The tissues. So. Many. Tissues. You’re in for a long week, and there is just no changing that. No matter the family, we all seem to come to the same screeching halt when sickness hits. Here are 5 mom truths I know to be oh-so-real when germs come to visit the household. 

1. You’re in for a few long nights. Your babies are so pitiful looking and surely feel miserable. You can’t wait to get them in bed so they can rest and Mommy can change out of her snot covered leggings and take a nice, hot shower. Not so fast. Little kids aren’t exactly pros at surviving a long night alone while in the midst of a miserable head or chest cold. They can’t blow their nose properly, get settled when they have a cough, or really deal with any of it. Most likely, someone will end up in someone’s bed. It’s hot, it’s cramped, and there are tissues everywhere. 
2.  You’ll rework your schedule like a 500 piece puzzle. Once you get those sweet, sick little babies to bed, you take a deep breath and look at your husband like, “Now what?”. Picking through your work week to figure out how to pull off 1-4 days with sick kids is no small feat. When your balancing jobs with multiple kids on different schedules, it’s a hot mess. Not to mention that anything else you had lined up for the week is now a hard no. Meeting people at the game Friday? NOPE. Family pictures this week? NOT HAPPENING.
3. You’ll stress over when it’s officially time to see the doctor. When you’re in the middle of cold and flu season with small children, you become a regular at the pediatrician. You see him over and over with the same symptoms, knowing he’s going to check the lungs, check the ears, etc. You’ve been there before. There’s nothing worse than dragging your miserable kid through the waiting room of a germ-infested doctor’s office to be told that there’s really nothing else to be done. Advil, saline spray, fluids, etc. Yet if you choose to push off the doctor visit hoping to fight it off from home, you start to wonder… Is she touching her ear too much today? Is his chest rattling when he breaths? The struggle is real, folks. 
4. Mom will get sick, too. Moms are superheroes. No doubt about it. Immune to all germs? No, we are not. If you’re going to be caring for little people coughing and wiping their noses all over you, it’s coming for you. And when mom gets sick, let me tell you…nothing really changes. The kids still need you to do everything for them. The house still needs you. The dog still needs you. At this point, your husband probably needs you too. There is no rest for the sick mama with a sick family. You struggle and push on. Luckily by now you’ve placed a tissue box in every room of the home. 
5. You get to be “Mommy.” Having a sick household just sucks. It makes for a long, awful week. It destroys your plans and steals your happy, active kids. But even when you’re exhausted and swimming in a sea of gross, used tissues… you’re mommy. When your babies are sick, they look at you in a way they haven’t in a while. They don’t carry stress about canceling plans, or missing school. The world just melts away and boils down to this. They’re sick, and they need mom. You get to be that person for them. The one who brings them medicine and a cold cloth. The one that tells them in a special soothing voice that they’ll feel better tomorrow, and it’s okay to sleep. The one that lays with them and brushes back their sweaty hair at 3AM until they finally settle. It’s the worst of times, but when we’re called to duty, we step up for our families. And order more tissues on Amazon…