There’s nothing quite like the surrender that washes over me when I’m holding my sick, feverish baby at 2 a.m. I’m worried, upset and tired, but I also know what I need to do. All my plans must be set aside, and this illness is my sole focus for now.
It reminds me of the early days of his infancy when I lived day to day. Although those months were grueling, anxious and occasionally maddening, sometimes I miss it. At least I had the space to focus on the all-consuming task of caregiving.
Eventually, the baby gets better and is all smiles again. A relief. But, of course, I’m next. I wallow in bed with an aching body and a sore throat, wondering why it’s still so hard to honor my own body’s needs. If I can readily extend that care to my son, shouldn’t I be able to extend it to myself as well?
Of course, it doesn’t work that way, mostly because I’m an adult steeped in decades of American productivity culture. Even though I’ve started to question the wisdom of over-identifying with my accomplishments, words like: “lazy” and “not enough” still dog my thoughts, especially on sick days.
Hours slide by in a blur as I drift in and out of sleep, and yet the days seem like an eternity. I spend a lot of time bouncing between guilt and gratitude. Guilt over lying in bed, for letting the to-do list slide. Gratitude that my baby is well enough to be at daycare, that my husband is well enough to take nights on his own for a few days, that I’m fighting off a relatively harmless virus.
In our culture, we treat rest like a privilege, a guilty indulgence. I’ve come to recognize this as deeply dehumanizing — there’s no room for any form of neurodivergence, disability, chronic illness or even grief. What happens when we can’t just “power through”? What happens when we just don’t want to anymore?
After living through the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, my mother’s death, and the birth of my son, I don’t want to “power through” anymore. I moved closer to my family. I quit my full-time job to freelance. I work hours that feel reasonable to me (far fewer than 40 hours a week) and I make enough. It’s the only way I’ve saved my sanity in this particular phase of my life.
Here’s the rub: Actually deprogramming my brain is another matter. I don’t feel fully at home in my new life, especially without a clear career path as a crutch to define myself. Every conversation feels like an experiment in how I talk about who I am and what I do now, and it’s awkward and uncomfortable. I keep trying on different words and over-explaining. (“I’m working part-time but I plan to find more clients soon, and full-time was the only option at our daycare at the infant level and even though it costs so much, it’s still less than a part-time nanny and paying employer taxes,” etc.)
It feels easier to word vomit all that unnecessary information than to tell people the direct, simple truth: I quit because I powered through one massive life change already, and I didn’t want to do it again. I started working full-time again less than a week after my mother’s death in 2020. When I remember that time, I sometimes weep with sadness that I wasn’t kinder to myself, that I didn’t recognize my own need for more space. So when my son arrived, I made a different choice.
I was not ready to work full-time again 12 weeks postpartum. My son was still so fragile and unpredictable. I still didn’t recognize my own body. I was still barely sleeping. In another life, under different circumstances, perhaps I would have kept working full-time and been happy. But here I am, cobbling things together, trying to give myself some grace and some time to figure out what’s next.
I don’t have a solution yet for my social awkwardness. I guess I’ll keep fumbling through that. Sick days, though, I think I can work on. I’m trying to get better at them. Part of it requires remembering my own childhood. It wasn’t fun being ill, but I don’t remember feeling guilty. That would have been nonsensical. My mother would bundle me into the big, comfy bed in my parent’s room, where I could doze, eat popsicles and watch TV. If I didn’t have the energy to watch TV, I would listen to Harry Potter on audiobook. To this day, nothing soothes me quite like hearing Jim Dale read, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
Having to mother myself on my sick days is both a gift and horrendously unfair. I miss my mother acutely when I’m run down, but I’m glad she taught me how to be gentle. I just need to remember to be gentle to myself as well as my sweet child.
Love this post, Ivy. I struggle with the same thing when I talk with people about why I've chosen to work 28-30 hours a week instead of 40 (even when they don't ask, I feel the need to explain). But it gets easier. And, turns out, not being as stressed is pretty great. <3