Sick Season
My family and I have just emerged from round 1 of Sick Season 2023-24, and I am entering round 2. It was a brutal season opener, but I will spare you the gory details. If this is a topic of interest to you, you likely have your own battles to draw on to fill in the blanks of what this can mean for a family of 5.
As a therapist who works with many new moms, sickness is a topic I’ve seen in therapy sessions quite often. And by “sick,” I am talking run-of-the-mill bugs and viruses. Being a parent changes so many things in life, and how you experience illnesses is definitely one of them.
What is it about being a parent that makes having sickness in the house affect your mood so drastically, and what can make this a more extreme reaction for some? Is there anything we can do about it?
What Makes It So Hard
So many things.
A simple virus can be unrelenting and unpredictable. Seeing your child in discomfort, pain, or even danger is tremendously difficult as a parent. There are social aspects in the United States that compounds the difficulty of illness in the household. Healthcare is expensive and oftentimes inconvenient, so you want to make sure that the level of care you’re seeking is really necessary. That can be a difficult decision to make. Workplaces are in most cases unaccommodating for sick days, and childcare is often unattainable for a sick child. If you yourself gets sick, that adds another layer. You are unable to take a sick day as a parent, and somehow have to manage not only the day to day responsibilities, but also caring for the sick child. And then, there is the cyclical nature of the “carousel of germs.” A run-down, sick body is more susceptible to the next germ that comes around – and around, and around, and around.
Sick Season is hard for all parents. However, there are several groups of parents for whom the diagnosis “just a cold” does not exist. These parents have experienced trauma where their circumstances prevented them from caring or protecting themselves or their children from a health threat.
NICU Parents - It does not matter if the time was measured in months or hours. If a parent had their child taken to the neonatal intensive care unit, they experienced trauma. It is very normal to experience medical anxiety during and following the time in the NICU. This category warrants its own blog article, but since I don’t have one ready to go right now, please check out these resources if you would like to learn more about the complex world of being a NICU parent. Hand to Hold PSI NICU support group NICU Parent Network
RSV/Virus HospitalizationParents - For the parents who started with thinking they were fully capable of handling their baby’s illness and then have it spiral to a point where they need hospitalization, their relationship with future germs will never be the same.
Medically Fragile Parents - Another category of the warrior parent who never asked for the role, parents who care for a child with cancer or another immunocompromised condition are placed in a situation where routine germs are really scary.
Pandemic Parents - Did you have a kid in the years of 2020/2021? Has the use of the term “unprecedented” made you feel numb to its meaning? Parents had to navigate fear, misinformation, isolation, ambiguity, while nurturing the next generation in an *unprecedented* era of parenting. Chances are, if this was you, you are still healing. And with your loaded history of isolation protocols, masks, swabs, ever-changing quarantine guidelines, and judgements of others, even a straightforward cold will be weighed down by this era of your personal parenting history.
It makes sense if you fit in one or more of the categories above that you may experience household illness in a more intense way than you think may be warranted. Let me say it again: it makes sense. Whether you want to use the word trauma or not, your body may be interpreting it as such. So when a threat is perceived, like the sniffles, your automatic responses may be triggered. The reaction to these triggers will be different for everyone, such as an anxious cleaning spree with a can of Lysol, or inertia on the couch stuck in feelings of sadness and overwhelm.
What Can We Do?
I cannot tell you how to not get sick. This is not my realm, and clearly I don’t have the answers. However I would like to share a couple of tips to help parents get through Sick Season.
Self Care
We all know the term “self care.” It has become a loaded word in our society (one that I have an issue with, but won’t take the space to write about here), and maybe you’re tired of hearing it. However, taking care of yourself when you have a sick tiny human is imperative, even though an already difficult task on a normal day may seem impossible when you’re operating in a sick household.
The basic needs are non-negotiable: nutrition, hydration, sleep. Yes, I am aware I said “sleep,” but please bear with me. It does not matter what supplements you take, you WILL get sick without these necessities of basic care.
With your child only consuming sips of pedialyte, you may be inclined to skip meals. With your child yelling for you, you might register your thirst but push it off to later. Let me be the reminder in your ear: eat meals & drink water.
Sleep is a much trickier situation, of course. Having a sick kid is a time to take all of that knowledge you already have about sleep hygiene but still don’t follow, and implement it NOW. “Tomorrow You” will not be mad.
In addition to the basic needs, what can keep you going right now? For me, after I became sick myself in the first round this season, I called my aunt several times because I needed someone to just say “poor you.” I sipped tea. I took naps when I could. I took all the medications I needed to ease my symptoms. Housework was put on the backburner. And since it works well for them at this phase of life and development, there was guilt-free, unlimited screen time for all 3 of my kids.
Pull from the Past
Another thing to aid your mental health in Sick Season is to pull from your own resiliency (credit to Kathy Tompkins from Rosenberg Perinatal for bringing up this angle in a recent conversation about the topic). If you have gone through Sick Season before as a parent, you have come out on the other side. You knew when something was not normal. You found resources to care for your child. You figured it out, and your family recovered. If you are feeling stuck or overwhelmed by illness this season, remember that you are capable. If anxiety is creeping up, telling you all of the things that could be happening with the illness at hand, remember that you were able to handle adversity before, and you will again.
Radical Acceptance
Radical acceptance is a distress tolerance skill from dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) developed by Marsha Linehan, which has wider applications to distressing situations such as getting sick. There is no going back and avoiding the illness, but there is a way to not attach to the suffering from it. In the most vulgar of terms, radical acceptance is a mindful approach to a “**** happens” attitude. When we accept illness will be a part of life, this acceptance can lead us to approaching the challenge in a way that is calmer, wiser, and in the end more productive.
Easier said than done, right? Remember, this is a skill. This blog post has a great infographic for how to practice this skill.
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Take care, and stay well. And I’m not just talking about your upper respiratory system. If therapy could be part of your plan for staying well, please schedule a free 15 minute phone consultation with me to see how I can help.
