Sick Child Versus Work - What To Do?

Does she think I’m a bad mother? That’s one of the first thoughts that popped into my head on a recent Monday when I answered my phone at work and was greeted with this: “It’s Nichelle at Bright Horizons. Ellen has a fever of 102 and has been cranky all day. You’ll need to come get her.”

I wanted to say, “But she was fine this morning when I dropped her off! Really!”

Instead I began to tick off in my mind all the tasks I had to attend to at the office, weighing that against my husband’s responsibilities at his job. I quickly concluded: I did sick-kid duty last time. It’s his turn.

A few quick words with my husband (fortunately we work in the same office, only minutes away from our day care center), and the immediate problem was solved. He would pick up Ellen. I would work late, getting as much done as possible since the next day would be my turn to stay home. The plan solved the logistics, but did little to ease my guilt. Ellen, who is only 16 months old, had been running a fever over the weekend. I should have kept her home Monday to make sure she was all better. But that morning she was fever free, and I had a plate full of work at the office. So she went to day care. Am I a bad mother?

When I stayed home full time with Ellen and her 3-year-old sister, which wasn’t that long ago, I’m sure I would have been horrified to learn that I would be making such a choice. After all, after the birth of my first daughter I told everyone who would listen that I didn’t plan to work full time ever again. I didn’t have kids just to see them on nights and weekends, I’d say.

And now here I am, working into the night while my daughter, my baby, is home sick. “She needs her Mommy,” I tell my husband. And, in nearly the same breath, “I’ll be home late.”

How can this be?

After my first daughter was born, I stayed home for a year and relished every minute. When I returned to work, it was part time and I was ambivalent, perhaps because I already was pregnant with our second daughter.

But after staying home for nine months with both kids after Ellen was born, I found myself thinking about work more and more frequently. In the end, I decided to go back full time for many of the same reasons other working mothers cite: I missed the people, the intellectual stimulation, the soul-satisfying feeling of pursuing a career I love.

“How’s it going?” people would say to me during my first few months back. My short answer: “There’s more life to my life now.” On the good days - when the kids are not sick, the house is not too messy and the office is not too hectic - I allow myself to think that maybe I do have it all.

But then I have days like this one. My baby is sick. I have spent the last three hours getting ahead so as to not fall too far behind. My two worlds collide and I wonder anew, and for the thousandth time, “Did I do the right thing? Am I a bad mother?”

When I come home from work, I go immediately upstairs to Ellen’s room. I feel her forehead. Still warm. I watch her sleep, her left arm flung over a favorite stuffed animal.

“Mommy loves you,” I whisper.

It’s a ritual I follow whenever I come home late from work. I do the same with my 3-year-old, Laura. Sometimes I’ll lean over the bed and say it softly right into her ear, breathing the words straight into her dreams.

Standing there in nighttime stillness, I almost always feel remorse that I am missing too much of my daughters’ childhood. Yet these moments are contented ones for me, too. As I gaze at my children, my love at that moment is focused and complete. My life is more full now that I work, and somehow my love for my daughters is, too.

No, I decide, I am not a bad mother. Just a busy one.

I like to imagine telling Laura and Ellen when they are older of my evening sojourns to their rooms. I will tell them what it was like to work and be their mother while they were little. I will tell them how difficult it was. And how wonderful.

I’ll tell them when they have careers of their own. Or children. Or both.

In brief: When you’re on a business trip and you can’t face the prospect of shlepping down to the hotel gym after a day of meetings, you may be able to work out in the privacy of your own room. Working Woman magazine says a growing number of big-city hotels either have equipment in a handful of rooms, or will bring equipment to a room on request. There’s often a charge to rent the equipment. Some hotels go even further, supplying a personal trainer, also at a fee. - from the Philadelphia Inquirer