Moms don't get sick days

One of the toughest areas of work family balance is figuring out how to handle things when one of your children is sick. I can blah blah all day about work family balance, and just get to the point where I think, "hey, this is pretty easy," and within a few days, it happens. You know the dreaded words, "mom, I don't feel so good." So now, which parent (assuming that you have another parent available) is going to stay home and cancel their work day? My kids seem to have a knack for getting sick when my husband goes out of town on business trips, so I really have no choice about staying home sometimes. What is even harder, though, is having a sick child to take care of, and then also being sick yourself! You really do understand the real meaning of "moms don't get sick days!" (And of course, on some days, dads don't either, but statistically, working mothers are more likely to take time off to be with a sick child than are men).

But, we've all had those days of being so miserably sick that you could barely lift yourself out of the bed, but still having to attend to a child who is suffering with a raging fever, or throwing up profusely, or unable to sleep all night due to a hacking cough. Or my personal favorite, having to drag my feverish and miserable child into the doctor's office for a one or two hour wait, when I'm feverish and miserable myself. Even with my husband helping out, there are going to be a certain number of hours per day that its just you and me kid. On those days, it takes every ounce of well, whatever that force is that got me up at 2am to feed a three week old baby, to get me off the couch. Yes, my priorties have changed with motherhood. I used to dream of island vacations, of spa days, and some as yet as invented, magical, calorie free Godiva chocolate. Now, I dream of the greatest bliss: having a sick day all to yourself to wallow in your own misery and sleep it all away.