On Sunday I thought, “You know, maybe what I should do is work on a Certified Nursing Assistant degree. Maybe it’s something I can do one course at a time, and then I’d be all set once I was ready to go back to work. And maybe I’d be ready now, or soon.” I emailed a friend who’s a nurse, to ask if she knew if there was any difference between one CNA program and another.
Sunday night at 1:30, Henry came upstairs saying he’d thrown up. For the next 19 hours, until he fell asleep Monday night, I was reminded of the years with small babies in the house. That feeling of not knowing how to find a gap in reality for eating lunch. Needing to remind myself to use the bathroom. Making sure I have everything I need within reach before I sit down, because once I sit down I’m stuck down for awhile. Lots of pre-rinse laundry.
Some parts were enjoyable. Henry is a very active, loud child, so having him snuggly and quiet was a treat. Having time with just one child was nice. Feeling essential was nice. A sick day can be nice, too, the way it breaks up routine. Having him fall asleep clutching my finger just like a baby does was nice. That “time has no bearing on reality” feeling was interesting to revisit for a day.
But I didn’t enjoy the part where I couldn’t turn my attention to dinner, or even to re-braiding my coming-unbraided hair. I didn’t enjoy trying to do all these things on half a night’s sleep. It wasn’t particularly fun to spend so much time with another person’s bodily fluids. I was getting oppressed by having someone else ON me all the time. I started FEELING the circles under my eyes. I was reminded of how impossible it is to fully enjoy the baby stage, because it’s so EXHAUSTING and DRAINING and CONSUMING.
This morning Henry is better. He still looks ill, but he’s not throwing up anymore, and he’s eaten half a slice of peanut butter toast and a big glass of water. He and I were both looking forward to the day ahead: still a sick day, but with more TV and video games and less washing out barf buckets, and less of him crying because he’s so thirsty but will throw it right back up if he drinks anything.
And then at the bus stop, Elizabeth threw up. It was very good timing: she narrowly avoided a bus/classroom catastrophe, and it would have been difficult to go pick her up at school with another sick child along. This changes our day, however. And it means the end to my hope that Henry just had food poisoning and that none of the rest of us were going to get it. And it means the end to looking into the CNA for now: I’m not yet available to be a reliable employee. (Though still interested in CNA-related talk.)
Oh man. We had that kind of illness go through our and the neighbors’ house last week, and it was rough. I hope not everyone gets it, and that you are able to get a break at some point, even if it’s just 10 minutes to stand in the shower alone.
“I’m not yet available to be a reliable employee.”
This really strikes a chord with me with all my recent pondering of my new SAHM status. My eldest was home sick yesterday, too. It is so NICE to just be able to take care of the kids without making excuses to anyone or feeling guilty because somewhere, somehow, I am letting someone down.
“I’m not yet available to be a reliable employee.”
This is one of the most challenging parts of being a parent AND being an employee, simultaneously.
My thoughts exactly! I am the only one in my office who has young kids, and it is to my great disadvantage at work. It’s so hard to deal with the guilt of going to work and leaving a sick one, and it’s also hard to deal with the feeling of letting everyone down at work because I can’t be there. It makes me not only an unreliable employee, but an unreliable mom, sadly.
Only right now my husband is working from home, so now I have the added stress of leaving him at home with the sick child and then the child not getting cared for the way *I* would do it. Whole nother can of worms, though.
YES. I did the WOHM thing for a long time. Then I lost my job and was a SAHM for 18 months. While being a SAHM has its own parcel of worries that are nothing to sneeze at, it was SO NICE that “always feeling like I’m letting someone down” wasn’t one of them for a change. I’ve been back at work for a year now, and this past winter was awful. My husband started a new job so he had zero flexibility unless the weather closed his office too. Between the work time I missed for the kids’ thirteen (!!!) snow days, plus the weather delays, “scheduled” delays and sick days, I felt like I was getting such a reputation as an unreliable employee. Then my husband landed himself in the hospital and everything really went to heck. Suddenly I had THREE important places to be, and I felt like I was always shorting someone. I really miss being a SAHM. I’m tired of feeling guilty.
Honestly, the primary reason I keep my job that I dislike for a number of reasons is that I’ve been here so long that I’ve built up a lot of goodwill, which I draw down every time one of my kids is sick or the wheels come off and then rebuild. Amassing enough goodwill to do that without anyone blinking an eye takes so long that I will probably never get another job until my kids are grown and out of the house. It’s ridiculous.
^^this.
I work full-time out of economic necessity, and I have three kids under six. They. Are. Always. Sick. It’s been a brutal winter, and I have missed a ton of work to stay home with them. I wouldn’t have that flexibility in a new job. As it is, I know my coworkers are frustrated and probably fed up, but I’ve got enough of a history with them to show that this is temporary and I’m not purposely being the worst, most unreliable coworker on the planet.
I am SO HERE. I mean, neither of my children is currently barfing and BETTER NOT ANYTIME SOON, but I am constantly playing the game of “how would THIS work if I had a job?” We’ve had 11 snow days and I don’t know how many 2 hour delays this year. My husband just trundled off to work each of those days, secure in the knowledge that I was home. Add in the sick days we’ve also had (two whole weeks of a fever and swollen tonsils for one child and that’s only the beginning!) and I am completely at a loss for how our house and family would continue to run if I were not at home. I know that people do it but the cost in stress and vacation days seems awfully high.
do you live in the dc metro area, by any chance, WHERE EVERY GODDAMN DAY IS A SNOW DAY?
YES. NoVA and MAN we are at OUR LIMIT, are we not?
I work part-time, at home, so I’m the one who deals with kids home sick, or school cancelled for the 100th time this year, etc, and I often wonder how on earth it would work if we both worked full time, in an office.
My husband works remotely for his company, out of our house. He deals not only with cancelled school and sick days, but with supervising homework and after school stuff. It’s huge.
p.s. I hope at least some of you are spared the bug. Seven people sick (at once or sequentially) would be quite an ordeal.
All of the things I was going to tell you about how I feel when my kids are sick made me sound like a vicious evil woman who probably never should have even had children, so I will give you props for finding the silver lining where you did and leave it at that.
I was a CNA right after graduating HS, and did it as a full time summer job (working 8 hour shifts at a Nursing Home) for 3 summers, as well as during the school year with the VNA. That was especially convenient, since I could schedule home visits around my classes. As I remember, it was a 4 week training program (at the Nursing Home), and then you got your certificate.
I have a lot of thoughts. CNA sounds like an excellent choice – and I can imagine you being the kind of CNA that all the patients and nurses and doctors ADORE – but…bodily fluids ahoy.
Also, I really hope the illness is super quick or really choosy about who it gets, and is done after Elizabeth.
Also, I love that the comments are mainly directed toward the differences in caring for a sick child as a SAHM vs a works out of the home mom. As a works out of the home mom whose partner, as many are, has a much less flexible career type (ie no sick days or vacation days), I worry a LOT about the baby being sick and how to handle it.
I think it would depend on the type of work you would do as a CNA. My mother has a few different home health aides coming to help her out over the course of a week, and I know that at least two of them are CNAs. They aren’t there for the regular 8+ hour shifts you’d see with normal office work. One comes for overnights a couple of times a week, and another comes for 2-4 hour stretches during the daytime. There are also two other aides who have come as backup when the usual two weren’t available. You might be able to do that sort of work.
The other question, though, would be if it’s financially worth it for you to do it. I know how much my mother’s CNAs are paid per hour, and it’s very low. Low enough that I feel guilty about it, even though I don’t set the rates.
My grandmother was an LPN (licensed practical nurse, somewhat similar to a CNA) and she raised four children and 55 foster children (yes, 55). It was a great flexible career for her, so I think you’d be great!
Besides, do you know how much bragging there would be on Twitter? “I got sick and @Swistle was my nurse!” “No fair, I want to get sick too!” “Me too!” Your grateful patients would all bring you See’s chocolates as thank-you gifts!
I mean, you’d be great as a CNA when you are ready! No pressure now but when you are wanting an out-of-the-house career, when you aren’t having kids’ sick days, then you’d be a great CNA!
CNA certification would likely not be worth your time. As someone else mentioned above, it really pays very little. Something that may be more worthwhile for you is a medical technologist path – maybe a year of classes + lab/clinical rotation, much higher pay and higher level work with the patients.
I DO think I’d like that! But there’s no place nearby for that kind of job. Just a nursing home and a home-healthcare company.
I just went through the process to get hired as an in-home caregiver/caring companion. I love it. It is only six hours a week and it is very much like being a mom to elderly people. I do a lot of the same things for them (making lunch, helping get dressed, brushing hair) that I do at home. It allows me to freelance write, get out of the house a little, get a few thank yous for menial labor, make a little extra money and be at home with the kids after school. Highly recommend if you want a gentle re-entry into the working world.
Oh, that is GENIUS!
Medical technologist is also known as a Clinical Lab Scientist and it is a 4 year degree. There is a Medical technician which is a 2 y ear program with 1 year classes then clicical rotations. As a Medical Technologist, I have no patient contact, only our phleblomomists do draws, although I know as some hospitals have the technologist do draws. I think you would be an excellent LPN, but then again you may have the fortitude to be overly detail oriented and do the lab thing. Maybe you could shadow before you made any choices and see what each type of job offered ?
I thought this was going to end a completely way a la: “I wanted to be a CNA and then my kid got sick, and then I thought NOPE.”
We had the puking sickness at our house twice last month. TWICE. Once it ran through all of the kids and the next time it hit all 6 of us. SO OVER BARFING.
Totally unrelated to your current dilemma, but just a thought. Before you invest any of your own money in schooling, you may want to check around with potential employers — some healthcare organizations will actually provide or pay for the CNA training, of course usually with the stipulation that you commit to working for them for a certain amount of time. I know a few people who have done this type of on-the-job training rather than paying out-of-pocket for a separate program.
I don’t think I had realized just how much my children are sick during the winter until I went back to work outside the home this past January. My first thought reading your last line was that I’m not sure I’M available to be a reliable employee at the moment, AND YET.
(SHHHH.)
I always think that people with a lot of kids are amazing, but when I think about how many people that is to be sick when a sickness burns through a house – WAH! I agree about the “time has no bearing on reality” part of a sick kid, although my stupid hyperactive anxiety frequently leads me to believe that every virus is Ebola, so that can cut into the quiet snuggly time. Once I brought Eve to the doctor and the doctor was curious about why I wanted to see her on day one of a fever, and I said Eve was really lethargic and threw up, and she examined her and agreed she needed an antibiotic and said “mothers know” and I said “no they don’t. I was thinking meningitis.” But it’s okay – my doctor gets me.
One of ours had a stomach virus last week. My sympathy.
I was a CNA during college. I think any CNA program can work just fine- they are generally quite short. The program I took was through a community college and took about 6 weeks.
I worked in two different nursing homes. One was terrible- day shift, 8 total care patients every day. It was physically and emotionally draining and I never want that kind of job again. The second nursing home was private pay, and the load was much lighter. I really enjoyed that job, particularly working with patients with dementia.
If I were going to do it now, I would go towards home health or hospice. Still hard work, and potentially pretty yucky depending on the state of the home, but hopefully a little less physically demanding.
Anyone who does nursing or caring work is worth their weight in gold, so it is a wonderful path to consider. But what do you want from a job? If you want to work with people, that makes sense. But if that’s not the reason, then I feel like I’ve stumbled into the twilight zone.
Because Swistle, you are a writer.
Unless you have some burning desire to do nursing, for heaven’s sake, write! I check your blog every day just to read your writing. Trust me, it’s not that I’m desperate for an update on your bathroom colour. I read your blog because I love to read your writing. About anything. It makes me laugh, reflect, ponder; sometimes your thoughts stay with me for months and months. Sometimes you help me put words around my own feelings. Yet your life and my life are nothing alike. If you wrote a book, or a collection of short stories, or whatever, I would buy it. Nurses are wonderful, but writers are important too; writers improve lives too. You have an obvious and abundant talent at your disposal without any need for further training. Just thought I would chime in to point out the obvious.
^^^ This. Totally, this. We’ll beg if it’s necessary.
Oh yes, definitely this.
I haven’t read the other replies (but I will after I finish my reply), so if I’m repeating what others have said my apologies in advance.
Very few employers expect perfect attendance. Most allow you a certain amount of “sick days” as well as “vacation” (some combine the two into PTO ( personal time off) and do not distinguish/care whether you are sick or going shopping). Although I have never worked as a CNA, I think it’s reasonable to assume that you would be allowed time off for sickness. I know when my children were too young to leave home alone while sick, my husband and I took turns using our allowed time off. Granted, the more young ones you have, the more at risk you are of using up your “sick days” or PTO. But if you have already demonstrated that you’re an otherwise reliable employee, you would probably be allowed to go “in the hole” with respect to your paid time off (for example, if you used all your sick days, had to dip into your vacation time, and were left with a planned vacation and not enough vacation days). Many also offer the option of time off without pay.
The point is you can be a “reliable employee,” and still be allowed to suddenly take time off without it putting you in any kind of danger of being let go. Granted, not all businesses operate this way, but I would say it is the norm for those with more than 50 employees. Sick time/vacation/PTO is to ask about (in generic terms of course) when you’re being interviewed, but will probably be brought up if they’re serious about making you an offer. It is illegal for an employer to ask about your married status, and I think (but not 100% sure) they’re not allowed to ask how many kids you have, their ages, etc. (but OK if you want to voluntarily share this).
So don’t sweat it. Millions of moms (and dads) already deal with this. It’s a fact of life.
So sorry to hear about all the sickness being passed around. Been there and done that, too, and while having a “puny” kid underfoot has it’s perks, overall it’s not fun.
I guess I’m one of those weird people who doesn’t get “mommy guilt” (it’s not MY FAULT my kids are sick). Plus, most of my peers had kids so it wasn’t like I was the only one in this situation. Or maybe I just had understanding bosses. Or maybe I was oblivious to any resentment on the part of others? But I also have the kind of job (environmental consultant) where I can work from home. Yes, it’s hard to get much done when you have a little kid who needs you (and who can’t get to the toilet in time), but oftentimes when they’re a bit older, but too young to stay home alone, you can leave them alone in the next room while you work. Even if I didn’t get a full 8 hours’ worth done while tending to a sick kid, getting ANYTHING done was a plus. My type of work also lends itself to watching sick kids during the day, then going to the office to work late after your spouse comes home from work.
I agree with the others who suggested that a job where you write, rather than wait on the sick or infirm, might be more suitable for you. When my kids were in high school they had to “shadow” someone for a day who worked in a field they were interested in, so they could get an idea what the work was really like. Rather than “shadowing” various possibilities, you might consider researching various positions, and then talking to someone in the field to get an idea what their work is like on a day-to-day basis. I’m sure you can find something that fits.
It does sound like we’re very different temperament types! But it sounds like another big difference is the kinds of jobs we’ve worked: it sounds like the kind you’ve had are the ones where if you don’t go in, you get behind on your own work but it doesn’t really affect co-workers, and some of the work can be done at home. The jobs I’ve had (bakery, pharmacy, daycare) are the kind where if I’m not there, I ruin my co-workers day: someone still has to do my work, and it has to be done in person, on site, and that very day. Which means I did feel bad for my co-workers: it’s not about “mommy guilt” or about whose fault it is—it’s that if I wasn’t there, they’d have to divide my work among themselves or else someone would have to be called into work on their day off, and I did feel bad about that. But perhaps I’ll eventually find something that’s more in line with your experience.