Mommies don't get sick days

I'm not going to sugar coat this one - Being sick, with kids, SUCKS.  Being sick, with sick kids, SUCKS BIG FAT  - fill in the blank with whatever is like the worst thing you can think of because basically, it's a living hell.  

Let me paint you a picture.  Your head is so full of mucus you feel like it may ooze out of your eyeballs, your throat feels like you have been gargling bathtub gin for a week, and your body aches like you worked out with John Cena  - an yet, you did none of these things that might actually be kind of cool to witness someone else go through.  We are not going to talk about coughs today, because that phase of colds lasts for fucking weeks, and I just don't want to think about it.  So here you are, sick as a dog - all you want to do is crawl into bed, down a bottle of NyQuil and pass out cold.  Doctor's orders - fluids and rest.  But...no.  Once you are a Mommy you can kiss that dream of a peaceful painful recovery goodbye.  

Here's your reality once you have a kid - or worse yet - multiple children.  Let's take your head first.  Yes, it's full of mucus, so much in fact that you can actually feel your eyebrows being pushed out of your face from the pressure.  Instead of silently rubbing your temples to ease the pain, maybe applying a nice essential oil and wrapping your head in a scented heated cloth, you have a 4 year old that has decided that today is the day to rehearse every songs she knows from Mamma Mia - at the top of her lungs.  Meanwhile, your newborn has also managed to catch his first bug, and while sporting an awesome fever, is uncontrollably crying all day..and all night.  Side note, you can go ahead and kiss your sleep training goodbye at this point.  The pounding in your head is unbearable - you silently dream Twilight Zone remedies for releasing the pressure or temporary deafness so you can have just a moment of peace.

Now, the throat soreness.  Sure, it would be great to sit around and sip tea with honey and lemon, and cuddle up with a blanket and binge watch Ru Paul's Drag Race, butt NO!  Not you! Not anymore.  Now you get to spray on that disgusting Chloroseptic shit in your mouth just to have the capacity to firmly send the 4-year old to timeout for deciding that creating "Sidewalk Chalk Soup" in your living room was a suitable cure for boredom, or for singing the still screaming newborn to sleep for the 18th time today. You leave them on the couch cuz you are too exhausted to take them to bed.

And of course, let's not forget about the body aches.  In the past, you would fill up a nice hot bath, put on a face mask, maybe cover it with a warm cloth and melt away into a blissful ephoria, followed by a naked fall into your bed where you would sleep for 10 hours only to be awaken by the gentle grumbling sound of your stomach needing food. 

Ya, no.  Now, you find yourself reaching for whatever drugs are in the cabinet that can offer you some sort of relief for the pain, because you not only won't be relaxing...you will also not be sleeping.  No, no, no. That ill infant will make sure of that.  You might as well find the good psedoephedrine shit, cuz it's going to be a long ass night.

And don't think you can ask your husband for help. They try, at least, they think they do, but honestly, they just don't get it.  When they are sick, they lay in bed for days and leave you to fend for yourself with the kids. They are just too weak to move. That's fine with the kids, because Moms have all the answers.  But when Mom is down, you not only get more requests from the kids, you have Hubs trying to figure shit out too.  You might as well just stay out of bed and med up.   

I don't mean to deter anyone from being a Mommy. It's an incredible experience and I wouldn't change it for the world.  What I would suggest however is to stay hell and far from anybody that is sick, take a daily cocktail of every single immune system booster on the market, and get your rest.  If you can be a Bubble Boy - do it. The temporary humiliation is much easier to bear than the grueling sick alternative.  Sorry, no happy ending on this one people - your Kleenex box is just going to have to stay half empty today.