I’ve been pretty MIA around here lately because we’re recovering from what can only be described as a crappy four weeks. If Dante had written of ten circles of hell, I’m pretty sure the tenth would have involved sick twins.
Mr. Blue & I both work outside the home. We have fairly decent hours compared to other jobs in our profession, but we’re the only people in each of our respective positions. If we’re not able to do our work, it just accumulates until we return. Cue the Baby Dudes getting sick. And by sick, I mean neither the perpetual daycare sniffles not-so-fondly referred to as “baby kennel cough” at our house, nor anything critical or life threatening. I mean just sick enough that they weren’t allowed to be at daycare and they felt miiiiiiiserable.
In the span of 4 weeks, they each were able to attend daycare about 5 days, though some of those days they were sent home early when a fever popped up. We went to the pediatrician multiple times and were told it was a stomach virus and to wait it out, and then that it was another stomach virus and a cold and to wait it out, and then that there was an ear infection, and then that it was a cold but they wanted to do lab work, and then that one had c diff, and then that they had another virus, and then that they had respiratory infections aggravated by allergies for which we needed to add two medicines and some breathing treatments. Good times were had by all….said no one. Our little guys were just not feeling good, and they perpetually had one thing or the other that was a violation of our daycare’s sick policy.
Typically, one of us will take a day off to watch the boys and then the other one will the next day. We look at our schedules to figure out who has obligations that can’t be put off and then decide who will stay home which day, if needed. This round of sickness just kept going though, and we were quickly burning through our leave time, plus work was piling up. In the past when we can’t take off and need back-up childcare, a family friend that is our go-to local babysitter will watch them or my mom has driven down (4 hours away) to stay with us a day or two. The problem with this four week stretch was that our normal babysitter had an injured back and my mom had other important obligations, like taking care of my 93-year old grandma. This meant we were on our own and had no other back-up daycare set up.
Our bosses were very understanding and generous, but we both were feeling extremely stressed out about all the missed work and about our babies not being able to get healthy. At one point, my boss asked if twins typically have compromised immune systems. He was just genuinely curious, but it made me feel awful that I had missed so much work he even thought to ask that. Eventually, we hobbled through the month, each of us taking off about 9 full days of work in a four-week stretch.
While having illness after illness that keeps the boys out of daycare for a extraordinarily long stretch isn’t typical thankfully, it illustrated one of the things I find most challenging about being a dual WOH family. Sometimes everyone needs us and we have to figure out how to balance our work load, our boys’ needs, and each others’ needs as well. I’m often humbled by the reminder that I just can’t be everything to everyone even when that is exactly what seems necessary. Sometimes something just has to give, and I just have to suck it up and come to terms with not performing at the level I generally would expect of myself.
Did my work suffer in that four-week stretch? Yep, sure did. Does that make me feel bad? Yep, sure does, but the Baby Dudes needed me and my work quantity and quality is the thing that had to give this time.
At the end of the day, all parents—working outside the home or not—are faced with circumstances where we have to make choices about what needs we’re going to meet in what order and what needs are going to have to be put on hold. It’s not always a feel good decision with a happy ending and a bow on top, but it is reality. We do the things we have to do and then work hard to make up the difference in the other areas when we are able to do so again.
What do you find most challenging about your working/staying home status and parenting?
blogger / persimmon / 1231 posts
I can’t imagine… what a rough month! Everybody feeling better and back into the normal swing of things?
blogger / pomegranate / 3491 posts
What a brutal month. I hope that you got all of the worst sickies out of the way for the winter (although I know it’s not a weather think down south for you).
My girlfriend with two kids close in age went through this, and she said it taught her and her husband that they need “a deeper bench” – aka more familiar back-up sitters, in cases like this.
admin / watermelon / 14210 posts
i seriously don’t know how wohm parents do it, and you have twins!
it does get better eventually and their little immune systems build up. charlie was sick pretty much the entire winter from 9 months – 3 years, but now he hasn’t gotten sick even once this new school year even though he’s around hundreds of kids every day.
hang in there mama!
apricot / 425 posts
This post really resonated with me. Trying to juggle everything when there are no bumps in the road is hard enough… throw wrench into the schedule and it’s tough to keep up and catch up. So glad your boys are feeling better!
honeydew / 7504 posts
Ugh, c-diff?! That sounds wretched. You poor things! I struggle with this, too, as a double WOHF. But my mom has always said, “Family comes first” and that’s the mantra I live by!
blogger / pomelo / 5361 posts
@Mrs. Confetti:
Great point. I actually meant to mention that one of our take always was that we needed to establish more potential sitters while they’re healthy so we won’t be in quite such a dire situation next time!
coconut / 8234 posts
Ouch. Yes, we’ve been going through the sickness, too, but we only have one baby to deal with. I find the illness as well as when our caregiver needs time off (we have a nanny share) to be the most difficult. I’m in a new job and DH is a teacher so it’s pretty hard to take time off. I’ve already taken 2 days off, one for LO and one because I got her bug. And I spent 5 weeks going to work sick and got a couple of people at work sick, too. But I couldn’t really think about myself while I was sick because the bambina being sick trumped me. During those 5 weeks I went to sleep with her every night and our apartment and everything else sort of collapsed into a dirty, sickness nightmare.
I hear this all gets better at some point! Can’t wait until summer
blogger / pear / 1563 posts
Oh poor little guys and poor adults! HUGE kudos to those families where both partners have WOH jobs!! We’re grateful that Mr. P has some flexibility in his job and often can take Little P on afternoons that he doesn’t feel well. It’s impossible to juggle it all perfectly, but it sounds like you’re doing a great job!
honeydew / 7444 posts
Poor guys!! It sounds like it was a wretched month.
Both DH and i are WOHP but we are lucky in that our schedules are really flexible. When LO is sick, we will both work from home. One of us will get the morning to work, and then switch off in the afternoon. It’s not really the best situation, but it has worked for us. But i can’t imagine 9 days off in 1 month. I really admire how you guys manage it despite such demanding jobs.
blogger / apricot / 366 posts
I tend to feel exhausted just at the thought of never again having PTO days for me – i.e. I apparently can never get sick. My days are either to watch Miss H when she is sick (if Mr. H can’t cover it) or when Mr. H gets sick on one of his days he watched her, then I have to stay home so that he can rest. Fortunately I have a really good immune system and tend to stay very healthy, but UGH – when does mom get to be sick?!
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
It does take a village to raise a family, and boy, let me tell you, I am thankful to have the help that we do. Today is a snow day, but both my husband and I need to be at the office, so my son is home with my mother. Had we not had her so close and willing, I would have had to take the day.
I think you’ve hit on something very important, which is you have to make choices and sometimes, you’re not happy with those choices (or an earlier version of yourself wouldn’t have been happy). But in the end, the world keeps spinning and we’ve got no choice but to pick up the pieces and move on. It also means that our careers are not always in trajectory mode. Sometimes, we have to stay in a plateau while other things around us zoom off, literally!
grapefruit / 4187 posts
Thanks to the “wonderful” corporate maternity leave policies, I am going from mid Nov – January without any vacation, sick, PTO, etc. days to take. They never gave me a choice, they just burned all of my days while I was out, even the unaccrued ones. I’m sure it’s to make sure I don’t take any additional time off in the calendar year, but man is it ever an anti-family policy.
Thankfully we have been able to count on our nanny and DS hasn’t been sick yet, but there have still been about 3 times so far that DH had to come home early or take the day off. We don’t have any family nearby and we also don’t know any babysitters personally (although our neighbors have recommended some).
So yeah, it’s going to be tough workign outside of the home for sure.
blogger / nectarine / 2600 posts
Oh wow Im so sorry Having a sick baby is hard but twins oh my goodness. I agree with Mrs Confetti in that more child care options is probably a good idea. Honestly I have good childcare options in my MIL and some other family sometimes as well as 2 other maybe babysitters and I still use to scramble at times when I worked. Its hard and you can never have enough caretakers in my opinion now especially when you work out of the home.
blogger / watermelon / 14218 posts
I feel you, momma… but not with two at once! I mean, we have two sickies at once pretty often, but not two babies.
If one of them starts getting sick, the question “what does your day look like tomorrow” starts up. We are lucky in that Wagon Sr. can work from home if needed, but not on a day when he has a lot of meetings. Me, on the other hand… I’m paid hourly so you can imagine what having to take time off of work can do to our double daycare budget. We are very fortunate that this is Wagon Jr.’s third year in daycare so he doesn’t get sick very often anymore, and him bringing bugs home while LMW was a baby seems to have built up her immune system pretty well. So while illnesses aren’t that frequent in our house, it DOES take a toll on our jobs because what does end up happening is that the illness flows through the house and takes us down one by one. I’d so much rather all of us get sick at once so that everyone can stay home at the same time, but usually it’s one sick kid and one semi-sick parent at home… then it switches to the other sick kid and the other semi-sick parent. So illness becomes a weeklong event at our house.
grape / 90 posts
What a rough month! (As a side note, “baby kennel cough” made me laugh.)
We learned recently that we need to have a backup for our backup. DH is a SAHD and we have extended family nearby so we were lazy about finding a reliable sitter, but then we had an all-day family funeral where all the extended family was going to be and there was just no way our not-yet-2-year old was going to sit still/understand why people were crying/etc. A random lady at the church offered to watch our son in the nursery (there was one other kid there) during the service. If she hadn’t been there I don’t know what we would have done, and I felt silly for being so short-sighted. Since then we found a great sitter who saved us at another short-notice panic time – but you’re right that finding a sitter is something you can only really do when you’re out of crisis mode.
Here’s hoping the next month will be a happy and healthy one for your whole crew!
cherry / 187 posts
That sounds awful! That’s my worst nightmare as we do the same as you do, we prioritize who can stay home based on what is on each other’s plates for the day. It’s really rough when you BOTH have important days, but someone has to stay home. We have no backup childcare and I am nervous about that when #2 arrives. It’s one reason we have considered a nanny in the past, but it’s more expensive and we’ll just have to wait and see if we can manage without doing that!
guest
We went through a bad 3 week stretch with only one baby so I can’t imagine how much worse it would have been with two! We have been doing a “staggered shift” approach. One of goes into work super early and then leaves mid-day to relieve the other (who then goes into work mid-day and works as long as needed). We’ve found that working a 6-7 hour day beats missing the work day altogether and looks better for optics purposes. We are fortunate enough to have office jobs where the work will just wait for us and can pretty much get done at any time and anywhere. We also use a back-up childcare service through Bright Horizons that my employer provides for those mildly sick days. I felt terribly guilty to leave my little guy with a virtual stranger but I had some important work deadlines that I just couldn’t miss and we ended up getting a great back-up nanny.
GOLD / watermelon / 14076 posts
@Mrs. Blue: M starts daycare in February and I am not looking forward to the daycare illnesses. You and Mr. Blue are such rockstar parents–I don’t know how you do it!
blogger / eggplant / 11551 posts
Yes, we experienced a month of sickness a couple months ago and it really made me feel awful! I didn’t think I was good at anything I was doing – being a mom, being a wife, being an employee… it was so rough, but I had understanding managers and so did my husband… so thankfully we were able to switch off and juggle our workloads appropriately so that one of us was always home when the kids were sick. We both have WFH schedules too so that helped a lot!
blogger / pomegranate / 3300 posts
I’m so sorry you had such a tough month. I have so much respect for WOHMS. With my four kids and the days they are sick I am pretty sure I would get fired. You are an awesome mom and you are doing a great job, even if you feel worn thin.
olive / 55 posts
Ugh! What a bad month! My husband and I do the exact same balancing act — each consulting our calendars to figure out whose commitments get priority and who needs to stay home when our daughter is sick. We had a similarly bad month (but only one baby, not two!) back in May when my daughter got an ear infection followed by hand foot & mouth followed by pneumonia. I think she went to daycare about 5 days in that whole month.
We were both feeling so guilty for missing so much work. Fortunately I have a job with reasonable hours and a very understanding boss. I was able to work from home when she was sleeping and somehow we made it through the month.
blogger / persimmon / 1220 posts
Oh man…that sounds ROUGH! Sickness always makes everything 1000x worse, doesn’t it?
I think the most challenging is that I feel like I wear so many hats/roles, and I never feel like I am fully excelling in any one area. I’m sure if I was a SAHM too, I would still feel like I’m lacking…being a mom is just the toughest job in the world!
guest
Oh that is terrible! Being a working mom gets really, really hard when kids get sick. Not fun.
pomelo / 5791 posts
That sounds awful!!
We are both WOH parents, as well, and it’s hard on a normal day. Honestly, I hate it, but have no other option.
Hopefully, everyone is feeling better!
blogger / clementine / 998 posts
I haven’t gone back to work yet but am dreading my daughter getting sick if I do – there’s usually no coverage for my shifts