Send This Story
Working Through the Illnesses
by Kim Morrise, The Weather Channel
January 26, 2009
I
don’t know one working mom who can’t relate. It’s 5:30 a.m. in the morning on the
day of your big meeting. Because you needed to wait until the kids got to bed, you stayed up
late the night before making sure you were prepared. Suddenly, through your exhausted haze,
you hear them: the cries of a child who needs his mommy. You run to his room, only to
see he’s thrown up. After cleaning up your poor, sick child, you turn to your husband.
He has so much work and an extremely important meeting early in the day.
For me, it happens often. My husband does not get family sick time, so he doesn’t get
paid if he doesn’t go to work. He can always lie and say he’s sick, but we’re just not that
dishonest. Therefore, the responsibility usually is on me to find a way to stay home with our
babies. I have to be honest; I like being the one to take care of them. However, it
creates a lot of stress for the “working” part of my “Working Mom” title.
I can’t complain one bit about my employer and what they do for me. I’ve come a long
way in my career. It used to be that I had to work nights and weekends with the days
off. I had three sick days a year and no holidays. I was in local news, and it came
with the territory.
Now I work for a company that is generous with its sick time as long as you don’t abuse
it. I’ve left live television and moved into interactive, which gives me flexibility to work
from home if I need to do so.
However, the fact that I have more flexibility doesn’t make it easier to tell your boss that
you need to stay at home, yet again, with a sick baby. My baby has what experts are calling
an immature immune system, and she not only gets sick with every germ, but she gets extremely
ill. The minute I see a runny nose, I know I’m in for a few sick days soon. I feel so
bad for her because she has now been sick with some form of illness in need of medication for eight
straight weeks.
Needless to say, I’ve had to be creative with my work days. Last week I had a meeting
that I had already canceled once because the baby was sick. She was throwing up, and I knew
she couldn’t go to school. My husband had to be at work at 7 a.m. So I worked out a
plan. He would go to work for a couple hours, then come home to relieve me. I would go
in for two meetings, and then come home and relieve him. He would then go in for the rest of
his shift, but leave 15 minutes early so that I could take a conference call in the afternoon.
The next day, she was still sick. I had a report to get out that day. I knew the
baby would need a distraction. I kept my three-year-old home with her. I had to do that
the next day as well. They play great together, and even though I needed, and frankly wanted,
to give the baby loving care all day, my oldest provided much needed distractions throughout the
day so I could also get my work done.
I think back to those local news days. I went to work many days with a fever and no
voice because I was so sick. I can’t imagine now if I was still in that work environment
trying to raise two little kids.
I count my many blessings that I have more flexibility and have earned the trust of my boss
and my colleagues to be able to stay at home when my kids are sick. Because for all the
enjoyment I get out of the “working” part of being a “Working Mom”, the “mom” part is the most
important to me. It’s my favorite part of my title.
I would love to hear any other creative ways parents have dealt with juggling their jobs
when their children are sick.
