Category: Working Mama

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I’m getting tired of posting about this…..

But baby girl is still sick. Well, actually, I think we may have FINALLY turned a corner. Yesterday she was much, much, worse. Greeness was oozing out her eyes and nose, and she was just miserable. We went back to the doc, and while she tested negative for strep and for an ear infection, it was obvious that she was worse instead of better than she was on Monday. The visit was just awful–she pretty much screamed from the moment they tried to weigh her until the moment we walked out the door. It was the saddest thing. We were, however, lucky enough to get SAMPLES of the antibiotic, which saved me a trip to the pharmacy, which I was most appreciative of.

Instead of hitting the Mega-stores, I just ran to Aldi to pick up doc-prescribed popsicles/ice cream (M just needs to drink ANYTHING she’s willing to drink), and mom-desired chocolate, frozen pizza and alcohol. Aldi’s now carries Irish Cream. How great is that? For 1/2 the price of Bailey’s. It was a very beautiful thing. I’m a huge fan of the “quick trip” to Aldis, becuase it really is quick trip. There’s no Starbucks or free samples to distract, only about 5 aisles to work through, and those checkers are FAST. And lest you think,” Aldi’s? How Gross and Generic!”, our Aldi’s is brand new, really clean and nice and dare I say, TRENDY!?!?! I haven’t been a grade school cafeteria to know if the stigma is totally gone or not, but children at my pricey little school bring in items from Aldi all the time in their lunches. And for every down-and-out person shopping at the store, there’s always someone loading their newer SUV with groceries in the parking lot. Anyway, I digress.

I was glad to avoid the pharmacy yesterday (I’ll have to go at some point, but hopefully M will be up to it today or we can wait til L gets home) and feeling pretty lucky, when I got a very nice phone call. The director at M’s daycare was calling to see how she was doing (I’ve been keeping them posted), which I thought was very nice. No one else in her class has been sick this week, which is good to know. She also said she’d give us a 1/2 price credit since we didn’t make it at all this week. I thought that was extremely nice of her since the actualy rule is that unless it’s pre-arranged, you don’t get a price break for missing a week. Just a little bonus to brighten my day!

While we were chatting, she shared her worst-sick-kiddo story–while her husband was out to sea (he’s Navy) she was home with their two young children, who’d come down with chicken pox. While she was in the middle of draping sheets on all the furniture, giving oatmeal baths and applying anti-itch cream, he calls, saying that they just pulled into port….in Hawaii. And he and his friends spent the day driving around an island in a mustang convertible…….at least L’s just in Chicago, actually spending most of the day working……

M had one dose of antibiotic and really seemed to perk up last night. Granted, she went to bed at 7pm and she’s now headed into her 15th hour of sleep, but I’m hoping she’ll wake up a new girl!

She has to wake up a new girl, right??

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Still Sick

Which is about the saddest thing there is. She’s been sleeping 12+hours a night, and taking 2 naps to total close to 5 hours a day. You do the math–so I’m home with her, but not really with her, you know? Remember that episode of Friends where Rachel wakes up her baby because she misses her? I’m not that dumb, but it’s tempting.

So the house is cleaner than it’s been, but it’s funny how dishes and laundry keep spontaneously generating themselves. I’ve read a couple books. Caught up on daytime TV (didn’t take long). I’ve done a lot of perusing of the internet. To complicate matters, my cell phone is out of comission (bad run in with a mug of coffee), so no long distance phone calls for me. I mean really, who pays for long distance these days? It’d be a crime against humanity. We actually do have long distance on our phone, but it’s a crazy rate since we never use it. No way I’m paying 10cents a minute to talk to someone I usually talk to for free.

This week has made me realize how lucky we really are–while it sucks that L is out of town, while it sucks that we are paying for a week of daycare we aren’t using, while it sucks that I may or may not get paid for this time off (with no boss, no one really knows how many sick/personal days anyone has!), and I don’t know how this little hiatus will effect my “career” (ha!) at least we have good health insurance (that’s not tied to MY job), and I know that we’ll make it through. I can’t help but wonder how single parents do this. I mean, really, what do you do when you are making just enough to get by, and then you have to miss a week of work? I know it’s happened to J more than once with Z, which is why she pretty much works all the time-because she knows that at some point something will happen and she’ll have to miss a few days, which screws up her whole world.

M is on her 13th hour of sleep right now. 13 hours! Can you imagine? I hope my next post will be about “amazing recovery girl”….this sickness stuff is just too depressing.

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mommy wars: a book review

That’s the title of the collection of essays I’ve been reading. What, do you ask, are the mommys fighting about? Why working vs. staying home, of course!

The book is a collection of essays, editied by Leslie Morgan Steiner. Most of the authors are authors, which is nice, because everything is well-written, but somewhat boring because a lot of their views are the same. They seem pre-disposed to working part time, from home, flexible hours, etc. Many were faced with finding “reliable help”, i.e.–The Nanny. The ones who stayed home talked about downsizing on the Upper East/or West sides of NYC. So while a lot their conflict is universal, it wasn’t very down to earth for the majority of America, IMO.

Things I would have liked to have seen:

1) More exploration into finding reliable center-based care, because most nannies are out of most working families price ranges.

2) More essays by women without MBAs, Ivy League diplomas and what not–again, a very small percentage of the population

3) Atleast one essay by a mom working for health insurance. I can’t tell you how many families I know with two wage earners because they need affordable healthcare.

That being said, there was a lot to chew on in the book. The moms who thought they would work but didn’t. The ones who didn’t think they’d want to, but did.

I’ve been reading this book for over a week, not going in any particular order through the essays. At first, I found the working-mom essays, for some reason. I thought the book was skewed in that direction. Then I started finding the at-home mom essays, and realized that no, there were about an equal amount of both. Some of the at-hom moms were VERY preachy–not taking into account that downsizing on the Upper East/ or West Side is not really downsizing at all. The at-work moms were all aware of the “pity glances” they get from the at-home moms. The at-home moms were a little resentful about having to take care of the whole neighborhood, classroom, whatever, while the at-work moms got a free pass.

A few quotes that I really like, in no particular order:

“I am old enough now to have known enough people making enough bizarre arrangements work (and making textbook arrangements fail) to persuade me that anyone who thinks she can judge what’s best for other people’s kids is either arrogant, psychic or high.” –Carolyn Hax

“…that make me more certain than ever that the definition of a good mother is ‘a woman who spends enough time with her children to know what the hell they are doing’ ” Iris Krasnow

And then there’s a whole essay by Susan Cheever called “Baby Battle” which goes on to describe the lack of support of working moms and at home moms–how the two sides are pitted against each other because only mothers seem really interested in the issue, when really society as a whole needs to take an interest in nurturing the next generation.

And that’ s just the tip of the iceberg. If you don’t have kids yet, read the book–it’ll give you some interesting perspective and things to think about. If you’re feeling good about the choices you’ve made, get the book–you’ll be able to see the point/counterpoint and be OK, I think. If you are feeling trapped by work or trapped by your children, you’d probably enjoy it too, at least some parts of it.

If nothing else, it’s a good exercise is realizing that the grass is always greener……

**if anyone has read it, please let me know if the “On Being a Radical Feminist Stay-at-Home Mom” by Inda Schaenen pissed you off. It REALLY rubbed me the wrong way.