Parenting in Sussex: No time to be ill when you’re a parent
I need your sympathy this week.
I’ve been ill for days and days and I’m feeling really sorry for myself.
The trouble is, there just isn’t time to be ill when you’re a parent. Especially when you’re a working parent.
Because the carousel of family life never stops, even if you’re feeling pretty dizzy and could do with getting off for a couple of days!
That’s the predicament I found myself in last week, as I developed a cold that turned into a sore throat, aches, pains, a headache and just general exhaustion.
My body was shivering, but my eyeballs felt boiling hot. Going upstairs to use the toilet felt like cresting the summit of Everest. And summoning the energy to cook the kids’ dinner saw me channel inner reserves of strength previously only known to Geoff Capes (nice little reference for the kids there!).
Much as you want to rest, you just can’t when you have children who rely on you. They still have to be taken to school. Their clothes still need to be clean. They require things of you whether standing up feels practically impossible or not.
Being unwell could have presented an opportunity to climb into bed and catch up on a few Netflix boxsets. But instead, with children needing me, it meant completing all the normal chores but frustratingly taking double the time to do them due to operating at half power at best.
One afternoon, I thought I might need my first nap in about 30 years, but I was so scared that I wouldn’t wake up to pick my son up from school that I sat bolt upright on the sofa. Even lifting the remote was a struggle. I just sat there wondering how on earth I was going to manage to leave the house to grab him.
In hindsight, asking a friend to collect him would have made much, much more sense. But I think my cold/flu/Covid? had left me so depleted I didn’t even have the headspace to think logical thoughts.
In case you were wondering, no children were harmed in the process of me being ill. Everyone was fed, watered, washed and deposited at the correct places.
Me? I’m still feeling a bit ropey. But I can rest when the kids are older, right?!