I never really thought about this until I was caring for my sick nearly three-year-old little boy and I inevitably got sick, myself.
Before I became a mother, there was nothing I hated more than getting sick – specifically getting congested. I don’t do well with congestion. I have a deviated septum and whenever I find myself unable to breathe, well, I get anxious.
I’ve been in the most relaxing situations – massage therapy appointments – where the simple tweaking of my lymphatic system would lead to immediate heavy congestion that would not only ruin my appointment, but, the anxiety I would get about not being able to breathe would force me to have to get up, request extra pillows to elevate my head, or leave. Acupuncture appointments were even worse because I’d be stuck, pun intended, with needles in me while dealing with an anxiety attack from treatment induced congestion. At least the congestion would immediately clear up as soon as I’d get off the treatment table.
Luckily, I didn’t get sick all that often. But, when I did it was like a short unintentional vacation in Hell. I love to elaborate on this because it’s really that awful for me. For the first two days of a virus or allergy attack I struggle to breathe out of my nose and out of mouth, and the only way I can catch some relief to breathe is by getting better and getting spotty relief from an over-the-counter decongestant.
Either way, when I lived by myself I learned how to manage my congestion and the hell that came with the anxiety of not being able to breathe. I would sometimes go into survival mode and work through totally sleepless nights of trying to cleanse and open up my clogged sinuses. This often left me feeling like Sisyphus. Luckily, I rarely got sick and mostly suffered through occasional seasonal allergies.
Things took a crazy turn after I had my little boy. We were blessed to have a healthy baby who never got sick during his first two years. But by the time he was nearing three, he had two back-to-back colds in October and then again in November. He wasn’t even in daycare. This was a particularly stressful time because of the pandemic. Both times he got sick, I got sick. And, if I was anxious about getting congested before Covid-19, my anxiety certainly piqued with cold and flu season, pre-flu shot and Covid booster shot.
I had decided to extend nursing during the pandemic so that my little one could benefit from my two Covid-19 vaccines and the follow up booster shot. Antibodies are passed on through breastmilk. The nearness and closeness left mama more vulnerable to whatever viruses he would pick up.
Of course, kiddos in daycare pick up and bring home all kinds of germs. Parents would always say that’s the key to building a child’s healthy immune system. But let’s be clear about something. Catching these colds doesn’t just mean boosting his immune system. It also means taking down mama. I know some dads and other family members might share in the sickness cycle. But, mama is always the target when it comes to sick little ones.
This isn’t a post about why it’s harder to be a mom than it is to be a dad. Someone else can debate that. But there is a difference here. My husband never gets sick. Is it because his immune system is stronger than mine? I already mentioned before having my son I rarely got sick – so dad’s immune system shouldn’t be stronger than mine! We both endured sleep deprivation during the first couple years, but, I continued to have interrupted sleep while I continued nursing. So, aside from differences in sleep hygiene, could it be that I’m in closer proximity to my child and, therefore, I’m more vulnerable to his sneezing and coughing getting me sick? Maybe.
But, I think there’s something else going on.
I don’t have scientific evidence to support this very speculative statement I’m about to make. It just makes sense to me. I believe the process of enduring pregnancy and labor makes a mother more vulnerable in her postpartum existence for years to come. I know this isn’t true for everyone. But, I suspect a lot of mamas would agree. Your body has been through so much. By the time your child is in the virus cycle, probably depending on when daycare or preschool happens, you may have not fully recovered or even healed from the experience. For some women it can take years to fully recover and heal from pregnancy and labor. And it takes years to get passed the exhaustion that comes with growing a baby, delivering and baby and recovering from that delivery. While dealing with the exhaustion that comes from your pregnancy, birthing and healing experience, there’s even more exhaustion coming at you from now taking care of your baby with a sleep deprivation period that just feels impossible to withstand. For many mothers that sleep deprivation continues through the toddler and pre-school phase. There are many reasons for this, depending on what’s going on at home with sleep training, whether or not you’re still nursing, and just how your body is recovering from a long period of interrupted sleep rhythms.
But, I want to back up before the exhaustion part and continue with the postpartum recovery part. While it takes just six weeks for your uterus to shrink back to its normal size, your body had other things to reconcile – like when it moved your organs around to fit your baby. The abdominal muscles and connective tissue have a long way to go to heal completely. I was one of those lucky mothers with abs that never fully recovered resulting in what’s called diastasis recti, which is a condition where there’s a big gap between ab muscles that should have realigned after separating during gestation. It gets even better – around this gap you get a pooch in your belly with fat and excess skin hanging out. Physical therapy can help, and some moms might opt for cosmetic surgery. But there is no cure for this condition. Three years postpartum, I hired a personal trainer to help me build my abs back up, recondition my pelvic floor and try to tighten things as much as possible.
Moms who have had a traumatic birth experience, birth injury, emergency c-section, etc., are likely to have a longer recovery time. I had a c-section after 40 hours of labor, and 4 hours of pushing. Trauma is relative to each mother; I definitely experienced trauma during the c-section. It added an extra heavy load on an already painful recovery experience.
Good nutrition is often more challenging for new moms – not just food choices, but how often you eat and whether you overeat or undereat.
So your body is at work for a long time rebuilding and recovering from so many things. And moms are often bad with self care during the first few years of bringing up baby.
These physiological conditions certainly affect a mother’s ability to ward of viruses that come her way.
As for the start of my child’s cold/flu virus cycle last year, I found myself miserably sick with his first two colds, and then significantly worse with the third cold in November. We took several Covid tests that came out negative. It was just par for the toddler/preschooler course. Not for my husband, though. He was healthy the whole time.
By February last year, my little guy got Covid from the rapidly spreading Omicron variant, and, I of course got it, too. My husband did not.
Since then it has been a long season of viruses and allergies coming in and out of our lives. In November of 2022, we were facing an uptick in Covid cases and new variants, a terrible flu season ahead and the rapidly spreading RSV pathogen sending many children and elderly adults into hospitals. It’s been exhausting. It’s one thing to have to deal with normal cold and flu viruses that are expected to infect your young child every other week. The emerging dangerous viruses that were coursing through our communities were scary. And it is taxing trying to navigate symptoms that are all so similar. It has been stressful wondering if the latest symptoms are the run of the mill colds that little kids must go through, or if it’s one of the more sinister viruses lurking around.
With this very steady, continuous cycle of sickness in our home, I find myself more exhausted. I continue to pick up whatever my child has, and my anxiety is in overdrive from not wanting to get sick and deal with what feels like collapsed breathing over and over again, to real worries about my child’s safety and what’s infecting us each time.
My husband is great. He helps take care of our little guy whenever he’s sick. I get most of the duty when he’s home sick during the workday; I’m an entrepreneur and can put my work on hold most days in a way that my husband cannot. But, when I get sick, there’s not much to be done for me. I’m usually still caring for our little guy and then I suffer through the nights. I cannot sleep when I’m congested. So, I recline on the sofa downstairs, sip on hot herbal tea and honey all through the night, and try to manage my anxiety and read or write. Eventually, I might doze off for a couple hours.
All of this is to pause for a moment and put a spotlight on moms during a challenging time of parenting. I know there are dads and other caregivers who do the same and endure getting sick, as well. But I want to take a moment to acknowledge how difficult it is for moms who find themselves postpartum two or three years and still struggling.
No one tells you about how often you will get sick once you have a baby, and for how many years. No one tells you exactly how long it will likely take to fully recover from pregnancy and childbirth because it’s different for everyone. No one tells you that your body will never be the same, that clothes will never fit you the same (I finally purged all of my stylish clothes pre-baby), or that you will never feel the same in your body. Some of your joints, like your hips, will forever feel stiff or sticky; your abs might never re-align; your pelvic floor might be a broken mess for years to come.
And no one tells you that you’ll be exhausted for so many years. I don’t know any moms of toddlers/preschoolers who are fully rested with excellent sleep hygiene, who really look refreshed.
I look around and I feel connected to these women who are in this same season of motherhood. We dress the same. We have the same look in our tired but bright eyes. There is a fullness that doesn’t go away after having a baby. All the exercise in the world cannot erase that fullness in the face, in the hips and belly.
When you fall ill to the latest virus, you go through a kind of battle because you’re having to armor up and care for your child no matter how you feel. You care for your child with the fierce attention of a mama bear, even when you are about to collapse. And you wonder if your immune system will ever protect you again.
COSMIC BITS 