Tuesday, February 11, 2014

There Are No Sick Days in Motherhood

What is least compatible with having young children?  Having any kind of illness.  You know who has absolutely no compassion?  Young children.  You know who doesn’t give one little rat’s ass that you feel like garbage and want to crawl into a hole and die?  Young children.

The same people who you will hold, and love, and caress while they sneeze and puke on you will then try to physically lift you off the couch while you are lying in a stupor.  They will jump and whine at you to get them raisins as you drag yourself around on your knees.

You know what else doesn’t stop for illness?  Housework.  You feel like crap and would rather crawl into a pile of laundry and disappear than wash said pile of laundry?  Too bad.  The towels don’t wash themselves, dinner doesn’t cook itself, the floor is not self-mopping.  (Note to self…invent self-mopping floor, make millions.)

This is why moms don’t get sick.  Or at least, if they get sick, they keep mothering, they keep laundering, they keep tending to.  We aren’t martyrs; we are simply people for whom there is no substitute.  Sure, my own mom can come over and help when I’m feeling really bad (as she did when I had a recent bout of mastitis).  But there’s no one else who can nurse the baby.  It’s no one else’s job to look after my little people. Sure, they have a dad...but come on.  He's a dad. 

So suck it up, mamas.  There are no sick days in motherhood.  

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