What a Sick Day Looks Like When You're a Mommy

When you were a kid, a sick day meant lying on the couch in the den watching reruns and eating chicken soup, buttered toast, and tea with plenty of honey. It meant being waited on hand and foot. It meant napping throughout the day, downing shot glasses full of cold medicine, sleeping in, missing school, and watching an anvil fall on Wile E Coyote's head over and over again.

Now? Now a sick day means dragging yourself out of bed in the morning at 6 am, as usual, to the tune of your two year old screaming "Mommy! I up! Want OUT!"

It means turning up your kids' sound machines to maximum volume at night so that they won't wake up from your hacking cough.

It means trying to explain to your four year old why mommies need to rest when they're sick. Even though kids only get more hyper and energetic when they're sick. Time to teach him about Murphy's Law, I guess.

It means covering your mouth and struggling to keep the cough from exploding out the whole night so that your baby, who sleeps right next to you, won't wake up and cry. It means nursing constantly throughout the night because you weren't successful -- and somehow blaming yourself that you weren't.

It means trying to convince your two year old that you can't hold his hand on the way in to school because you just blew your nose again. It means saying "Mommy's hands are germy" over and over again to the incessant question "WHY?"

It means making yourself some chemical-laden instant noodle soup because who has time to actually make soup anyway?

It means lying on the basement floor and letting three kids use you as a racetrack for their Matchbox cars. And feeling proud of yourself for providing them with entertainment.

It means juggling a baby in one hand, a toddler in the other, and a cup of hot tea on the counter getting cold because you just don't have a hand to pick it up in.

It means sneezing, blowing your nose, Purelling your hands, putting away a bag of groceries, sneezing, Purelling again, putting away another bag of groceries, blowing your nose, Purelling again, and then sneezing all over the third bag of groceries that are supposed to go into your kids' lunches tomorrow.

It means refusing to take cold medicine because you're nursing, pregnant, or so used to being nursing or pregnant that you don't even think of it as an option.

It means falling into bed at the end of the day and worrying more about your six year old's bad day in school than about your own pounding headache.

It means finding strength within yourself that you didn't know you had. Finding selflessness where you thought there was selfishness. Finding love and compassion where you were sure there was only self-centeredness and fatigue. Putting your kids first, even if all you want to do is dive bomb onto the couch and pull a pillow over your face.

It means being a mom. No matter what.