To think mat leave is bloody hard

[AllyRose10]

Currently ill with flu whilst on maternity leave. No one to look after baby tomorrow. DH has to work. But of course if he was ill… he would get the day off with no baby to look after.

exhausted by the night wakings whilst sick, nose blocked as if it was by glue so literally can’t breathe through nose and so can’t sleep, cobblestone throat, ears ache, and how am I supposed to survive all this with no relay?

😭

It’s rough OP, you just have to do what you can to get through it. Try and chill as much as possible today.

And not everyone’s partner can take a day off at such short notice, surely that’s in the reserve for emergencies not general illness.

Oh op I’m happy to throw in the handhold if you haven’t already left the thread. It’s fucking shit sometimes. We don’t really have a ‘village’ (elderly parents, only one sibling with caring responsibilities elsewhere, no NCT group because we moved out of London after DC1, no local friends as we moved here in lockdown, no chance to build a network at nursery as it’s a drop and go/pick up and run set up, other friends not nearby and often with babies or no kids (ours a little older)). I said to DH yesterday that it seems in order to have kids and not go insane you either need the village or the ability to buy the village in - we have neither sadly! And that’s before the shit hits the fan with illness, work etc.

I just like the knowledge that what doesn’t kill you make you stronger and since returning to work post DC2 I feel far more resilient :-) When issues happen I ask myself “is this as bad as that summer flu I had in June 2022 when DD was 22 months, DS was 12 weeks, DH had to go into the office due to a project launch and it was 40c+ outside all week and I laid on the sofa naked and breastfeeding in front of a fan while not yet 2yo DD watched 10 straight hours of CBeebies in just a nappy? Oh and I couldn’t take the good drugs due to breastfeeding, I felt like shit and was still recovering from a CS?”

Answer is invariably ‘no’ 😂

in your own op you literally said ‘if he was ill he would get the day off’ with the implication being that if he was in exactly the same amount of pain you are in, he would have the day off.
you then went on in a later post to say ‘he’s got something that can’t be pushed back.’

so which is it? Would he have taken the day off if he was as ill as you are right now, even if he has something that can’t be pushed back, or not?

Parent of two young kids here currently on my second mat leave, and I don't agree with this! It's so much easier to be ill when you're working and can take a sick day while the kids are in nursery, or even just muddle through a day at work. Looking after young kids all day while feeling poorly is brutal.

I was ill the other week and thankfully my DH was able to take the day off to have the kids (baby isn't in nursery yet and it was my toddler's day off), but I thought about how much easier it was when I got ill pre-mat leave - drop the toddler at nursery and go home to bed! It feels relentless when you're on mat leave but I think you forget that when you're not in the midst of it, I certainly did until I went back into it all again the second time round.

Sending sympathy OP. Don't feel guilty about using TV if you need to, a bit of Ms Rachel or Hey Bear sensory works wonders when you just need to survive the day!