Break out the Kleenex confetti, moms and dads. Sick season is officially upon us. And, need we even tell you? It’s the worst.
Sure, sick season stinks for everyone, but when you have kids, it’s terrible times two. In addition to the heartbreak you’ll feel when your child inevitably catches the virus du jour, there’s also a good chance that you yourself are going to get the superbug that’s aggressively making its way through your kid’s school. And unlike your offspring, you won’t be on the receiving end of homemade chicken soup served in the teddy bear bowl and a surprise coloring book from the drugstore. In fact, you may even be expected to perform all your typical parenting tasks while you’re under the weather.
From the laughable amount of sleep you’ll get to the noise pollution being produced in your living room when you’re just trying to close your eyes for 10 minutes, here are eight reasons getting sick when you’re a parent is the pits.
1. Sleep for sick parents? HA!
Ask any doctor and they’ll tell you: Sleep is one of the most crucial elements to convalescence. It is then that your body rests, recuperates and, pleasant dream by pleasant dream, recovers. It’s why we get our kids to bed early and let them sleep as late as they want when they’re sick. It’s why we encourage them to nap, or, at the very least, curl up on the couch with a pillow, blanket and cozy movie. However! In a cruel plot twist, it is this very thing we’re robbed of as parents when we’re not feeling well.
Do babies refrain from getting up at night to eat when we’re under the weather? No. If anything, they’re hungrier during this time. Do toddlers “sleep in” when we have the sniffles? Of course not. They still make their not-so-quiet way into our bedrooms at 5:30 a.m. with requests for smoothies and an opponent for There’s a Yeti in My Spaghetti. Children don’t care if we need rest. In fact, it almost seems as if they’re actively trying to prevent it.
2. You eschew the nighttime meds
Sometimes when you’re sick with a cough or a sore throat or a wildly stuffy nose, you need a little something to help you get to actual rest. Something to help you, you know, breathe or stop coughing for 10 minutes. But when you have kids, it can be tricky (particularly if you’re a single parent). What if someone gets up in the middle of the night and needs you, but you’re in a Nyquil-induced oblivion? What if you sleep through your alarm and no one gets to school tomorrow? What if the medication has the opposite effect and makes you more jittery and you can’t sleep at all?! It’s kind of surprising, but there’s a lot more at stake when you have kids and are considering taking a nighttime cold medication. Who knew!
3. Surprise! No one cares you’re sick!
No matter how thoughtful your kids are and no matter how many rainbow and heart-covered cards they make you during your illness, here’s the real deal: They still expect to be on the receiving end of everything you normally do for them. And who can blame them? They’re kids. But man, having to do school runs or clean lunch containers or make dinner or shuffle people to activities or help with homework is rough when you’re feeling ill. Can’t a parent catch a break? Like, a literal break?
4. Your brain doesn’t get to be in sick mode
Before kids, you can more or less tune out the world when you fall ill — or, at the very least, focus solely on yourself and what you need to do once you’ve recovered. When you have kids? Not so much. Even in your borderline-comatose state, there’s a good chance you’re still making lists in your head and on your tissues and worrying about how your daughter needs a show-and-tell item for Thursday and your son’s Flash shirt needs to be clean for “red day” at school and OMG! You’ve had library books sitting in the hallway since Memorial Day! If you have a partner, it doesn’t matter how evenly divided the workload is in the house, there’s always a keeper of the gate. And if that keeper is you, Godspeed, sicky.
5. The noise
Oh, the noise, noise, noise, noise. Few things can bring a parent joy like the sound of their child’s laughter or the little pitter-patter of their kids’ feet. That said, when you’re sick, these noises may make you want to stab yourself in the ear. And even worse is the sound of kids fighting — which they will do! — when you’re trying to get 10 minutes of rest in bed. For the love of god, Sally, just give Johnny the brown pony! Who cares?!
6. You’re worried about getting your kids sick
In the rare instances that your kids aren’t the people responsible for giving you your nasty virus, there’s the worry that you, patient zero, are going to give it to them. Needless to say, this is not something one single fiber of any parent’s being wants. Not only do you not want your child to suffer like you are, having a kiddo home sick has potential to wildly throw an entire family’s schedule off, regardless of whether you stay home, work from home or work three hours away from home.
7. Your doctor’s appointment throws the whole day off
And speaking of throwing things off, let’s touch upon doctor’s appointments — if you go to one, which you may not, because you’re a mom or dad. Not only is there a good chance the only available appointment is going to be smack-dab in the middle of naptime or school pickup or something else you need to be around for, in some cases, you may need to bring a child with you to the doctor. And if that’s the case, ugh! Might as well just cut out the middleman and serve your kid a petri dish full of infectious diseases for lunch.
8. The aftermath
Few things can top the elation we all feel once sickness subsides and we’re feeling like ourselves again. But! When you’re a parent, there’s a pretty good chance that elation is going to come with a side of half-drunk sippy cups of milk under the sofa, a playroom that exploded and piles of dirty laundry.
But hey, at least you can do it all without coughing, right?
