By the Flame's parenting columnist Andy Lawrence
What seems like long ago, in the distant land of life before children, my husband and I took rest for granted.
We were entitled to paid sick leave and had little by way of responsibility beyond a cheap rental and some houseplants. When we fell prey to the annual autumn cold virus – some years even skipping it entirely thanks to full capacity and even fuller time to tend to our bodies with food and exercise – we might have taken one day off.
We’d spend it lounging in bed, watching TV shows before bucking up, taking some Codral and going to work the next day, convinced of our indispensability. Or perhaps it was simply the special brand of shame-laced guilt wrought from a collective childhood of linking achievement with self-worth that prevented us from feeling entitled to rest.
Whatever it was, it was stupid. I want to reach back and give my 27-year-old self a retrospective little slap in the face for squandering all that time and capacity in a job I hated. A little self-righteous, current me would lecture her about the need to listen to her body, rest, and “quit your damn job!” I’d laugh when she’d protest, telling me that she had no time and was overwhelmed and, “what would I even do if I quit!?”
Overwhelmed? My dear, you have no idea.
Another, more compassionate part of me soothes that past-self as well as my current raging indignation. I was overwhelmed and I had none of the tools I now have to deal with it, despite having less pressure.
These are the kind of exchanges I have in my mind now, as I make my kids' lunches while feeling like I might faint from exhaustion, the latest virus rippling through my skin. I dream of a time when I had the luxury of being ill without tiny humans needing three meals a day, plus countless snacks, emotional stability and age-appropriate entertainment, a continuous cycle without reprieve. Add to that the crushing guilt over the amount of TV they’re consuming and the tense, desperate snapping that erupts from me when their endless bickering threatens to consume my very soul, and you’ve got yourself the perfect concoction for despair! Yay!
All I want to do is crawl into my bed and return to my current escapism: the kitschy but addictive land of fantasy smut novels. Maybe have a long, hot bath that doesn't involve my beautiful toddlers crawling all over my body, body-slamming my stomach and disappearing beneath the water in what I can only describe as an effort to return from whence they came. But in lieu of literally any other person to step in, I keep giving cuddles, making food, disrupting conflict and calming my inner rage when my threenager changes her outfit for the third time before feeling ready to leave the house.
This latest illness likely came from one of the brilliant but inevitably disease-filled indoor play centres in the Illawarra.
Last week, along with every other tense parent and under-stimulated child in Wollongong, my daughters and I packed into the Discovery Centre, keen to escape the rain and release some cabin-fever-fuelled energy. It’s a gamble, always a gamble. And this week we lost on black.
It’s a brutal joke, really. Only after having my children have I been granted the tools to listen to my body and prioritise rest. With delightful paradox, they gifted me self-love and the ability to rest guilt-free alongside an utter incapacity to do so. Well, to be fair, the latter is a freebie from a hyper-individualistic, capitalist society that champions nuclear families and gendered roles in the home and the workforce, but who’s keeping track? Me. Obviously me.
Covid doesn’t help. Before, a snotty nose and a cough would elicit some sympathy, perhaps only a subtle shuffle away from the sneezy one at work. Now, a sneeze will earn you an unfettered look of disgust and disbelief, even in your own home. The fear of catching something now creates an even larger barrier to parents accessing support when the family is unwell for fear of unwittingly sounding a death knell to anyone in their inner circle.
So we somehow survive the days and weeks in a festering soup of sickness, post-Covid immune system naivety and daycare sending us fortnightly germ-gifts. Someone brings it home, then one by one each of us in the family falls victim until we are all wiping our noses and snapping at each other.
After a stern discussion with my past-self, I tend to myself in the small ways I can. I have the bath with the kids: two birds, one stone. I tag-team with my husband to piece together meals that are a compromise between ease and nutrition. I expand my perspective of who my village is to include meal delivery services, the daycare staff at my daughters’ school (when they’re finally well enough to go), the sun (finally and blissfully shining on my pallid face) and, of course, the saucy characters in my indecent novel.
They are the real MVPs for breathing levity into me through stolen moments of escapism as we weather the torture chamber that is being ill while caring for young children.
About the writer
Andy Lawrence is a doula servicing the Illawarra and globally online. Having trained as a research scientist with a PhD in entomology, the birth of her two daughters catalysed a career shift toward supporting women and their families as they traverse the transition to parenthood. She runs women's circles locally to build community connection among women and her doula work centres on guiding women home to themselves and their own wisdom. She works with women who are feeling the need for support beyond that from their partner and are ready to create their village. She believes that supported mothers equals secure families and healthier communities.
