If Anyone's Dreams Should Be Put on Hold, They Should Be Mine

Last week was my sons’ third week going to daycare. It was also the second time in those three weeks that they each came down with a virus. The first time, it was a stomach bug and a viral sinus infection. This most recent time, it was some mysterious virus that caused a 103 fever in my 3 year old and a secondary viral sinus infection in my 1 year old.

I was warned when they started daycare that they would probably get sick often in the first few months as their immune systems were developing. And yet, I wasn’t expecting it to happen so fast, and I surely wasn’t expecting all the emotions that would come it.

These sicknesses, in and of themselves, are not life-threatening and they will not cause lasting harm. But obviously, no parent wants to see their children sick, common illness or not.

One lasting consequence of my sons being sick is the mental and emotional roller coaster I have found myself on. I keep finding myself coming back to this same mantra:

If they were still home with me, this wouldn’t be happening.

Not only has this thought been persistent, but it has carried with it an immense amount of guilt.

I hate seeing my kids sick. I hate wondering if I made the wrong decision in being a working mom. I hate knowing that sending them to daycare exposed them to things they probably wouldn’t have come down with if I had stayed home.

After struggling with these thoughts over the last few weeks, I started to do some internal searching to see where this was all coming from. I landed on the conclusion that my guilt was in fact not coming from the fact that I had done something wrong, despite what my mind and heart would have me believe.

No, my guilt came from something much more hidden and harmful. I realized that I had absorbed the belief that if anyone’s dreams should be put on hold for the sake of the family, they should be mine.

This realization sent me into a spiral, and if I start to sound like a feminist, maybe it’s because this belief originated from the idea that women are expected to hold everything together. And if they don’t, it’s to be taken as a personal failure.

If my husband had stayed home with my sons and then they got sick from daycare after he went back to work, nobody would look at him and question if his career was worth it. You wouldn’t hear whispers of people asking if he should have stayed home instead. Nobody would expect him to carry the emotional weight of every runny nose, every fever, or every stomach bug that comes home.

As mothers, we are expected to carry that weight automatically. And yet, it extends even further than this.

We’re expected to be grateful for the opportunities we have outside of motherhood while also feeling guilty for taking them.

As working mothers, we are somehow supposed to build something for ourselves while never letting it cost our children anything.

What I am becoming acutely aware of is how impossible this standard is, because every choice has its tradeoffs.

My sons getting sick is not indicative that I failed them. It’s part of a normal childhood, at some time or another. Children who stay home and those who go to daycare get sick. Children with sahms, working moms, grandparents, nannies, and any other family dynamic you can think of get sick.

One thing I would never do is tell another mom she should feel guilty about the career she loves because her child caught a virus at daycare.

So why was I so willing to tell myself that?

I’m still going to feel sad when my boys are sick. As a mom, I don’t think that feeling will ever go away.

But I am done mixing that sadness with guilt.

I can wish I could take every sickness away without, at the same time, believing I caused it.

I can miss my sons while they’re at daycare and still know that I am allowed to have work that fulfills me.

I can love being their mom without believing that motherhood has to be the only part of me that gets to grow.

If you’ve been carrying that same guilt around, I hope you’ll question where it came from before you accept it as truth.

Because I have a feeling it didn’t start with you.