The Background

Tuesday at midnight (or Wednesday, if you prefer) we awoke to the sound of Frances crying. Erik got up to comfort her, and I was just about to doze off again when Erik called out: "Andrea, can you help me? Frances threw up everywhere."

This began two hours of changing the sheets, changing her pajamas, sponging her off, combing chunks out of her hair, only for her to throw up again and start the whole process over. Towards 2:00 am--both of us only minimally coherent--Erik wondered aloud if we should give her a bath.

"What? No!" I said. "It's the middle of the night. She's already tired and sick. We'll just do the best we can right now and she can have a bath tomorrow morning."

"But if she has a bath tomorrow morning I won't be able to get her in to daycare on time," he said.

"I think you might want to consider that she won't be going to daycare tomorrow."

Both of us were too tired to take it any further at that time of the night (morning), and at 2:00 am when we put her back onto another set of clean sheets in her crib, dressed in a diaper and jogging pants because her pajamas were all soiled, neither of us had much confidence that the night was over yet. But she slept through, and we both staggered out of bed at 5:45.

Erik went to get her up at 6:00, her normal time for getting up on weekdays. She lay tiredly on his shoulder, her left eye wandering badly as it always does when she is exhausted. "You are not seriously going to make her go in today, are you?" I said.

"Well, I don't know yet."

This depressed me. I am out of family leave for the fiscal year (which runs April to April in my organization) so I couldn't stay home with her unless I called in sick myself--Erik, however, still had 1 1/2 days left. My Dear Readers are very clever, so I know they will have put together that Erik had 1 1/2 days left because I am usually the one to stay home with her when she's sick (we have both used up 1 1/2 days going together to various of Frances's specialist appointments).

To my mind, a two-year-old who has been up half the night spewing half-digested food and stomach acids all over everything is entitled to curl up on the lap of a loving adult and enjoy a day of undivided attention and untaxing activity. No questions asked, no thought process necessary. I know that it was hard enough to drag myself out of bed the next morning just from lack of sleep; the thought of my wee one sitting half-stoned in daycare, with only 1/4 of an adult's attention, much larger children barelling around her, limited food options, bright lights and loud colours everywhere, and so on--made me deeply sad. It would not have occured to me to send her in, under the circumstances.

But I wanted to see what other parents thought. I just assumed that vomiting=too sick to go anywhere.

My Completely Neutral Question, though, wasn't as neutral as I thought--I should have been clearer, because it should be obvious that not everyone makes that decision in the same context. Not everyone has a partner, not everyone has family leave. Without a partner and without family leave, I'm not sure what I would do, but the whole process would be vastly complicated. So my apologies to anyone who may have felt (or who does feel) that the whole scenario takes for granted a certain family structure or lifestyle that is actually not all that common. You're right. Ooops.

I am SO looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.

Oh, and if you're wondering: Frances stayed home with her Daddy yesterday. She got to watch lots of television and have a nice extra-long nap, after which she was full of beans. She'd ask for "tloklat" while bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, she ate a good supper, she made a lovely fingerpainting and commissioned two play-doh boot sculptures, and slept soundly all night long.

Posted by Andrea at January 6, 2006 8:07 AM under Mothers and Anti-Mothers

EMAIL this entry

(comments fields are below this section)