It started with my 4-year-old. For a couple weeks, she had been coughing. No one else had gotten it until my younger daughter and my husband both caught it the same night. Thanks to my eight years as a public school teacher, I have a pretty rock solid immune system and have been able to avoid getting the dreaded cough thus far.
Even though I’m not coughing, I’m not symptom free. It’s spring in Georgia—which means it’s pollen season, also known as allergy season. During this past week, I’ve been congested and more exhausted than I’ve been this entire pregnancy. My body is begging me to rest, but my brain is doing the math and making sense of the fact there’s not really time to rest.
I work for myself, and that means I am the only one responsible for finishing everything that needs done before the baby. I have at least one more week of working for my clients, getting caught up on paperwork, and filing my taxes before I can put my business on hold for a little bit. While I have to take care of my work obligations, I’m beginning to accept that certain things that I want to get done around the house just might not get done, which is OK. I’m revising my lists and prioritizing, separating the have-to-dos from the want-to-dos.
To be honest, it’s somewhat of a silver lining that my girls don’t feel well. While I’m trying to work efficiently without the energy to really support it, there they are wanting to rest and snuggle with me. My youngest has been holding her hands up to my belly for me to pick her up a lot lately, something that I realized she had kind of stopped doing. It’s not easy for me to pick her up and hold her, so she’ll take my hand and lead me to the couch. I think she’s doing me a favor as much as she is doing herself one. It’s hard enough to not feel overwhelmed and tired at 37 weeks without fighting illness. Not only is it important to rest, but I don’t want to do anything that could potentially make this baby appear sooner than we are expecting. Plus, I can use the extra downtime to look through some baby name apps to try to figure out what to possibly name this one (which is currently only on the want-to-do side of my list).
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