Sick Days as a Single Mom of 3
Today is day 3 of being sick with some kind of virus.
I tested negative on 2 combo home tests for flu A, flu B, and COVID, but I cannot taste or smell anything, so I still suspect it is COVID. Whatever it is, I know I feel terrible. I’m exhausted to the bone. I know my body would strongly prefer that I lie down and do nothing.
Unfortunately, I am a single mom of 3 so “do nothing” is not generally available to me.
There is an opulent version of a sick day that exists in movies and in other people’s lives where you stay in bed all day sipping hot tea while watching television and finally sleeping until your body is refreshed.
Sounds amazing, but that is not my life.
When I am sick, I still get up. I get the kids ready for school. I make sure everyone has what they need. I function.
But I have also learned that functioning does not mean treating a sick day like a free day to catch up on everything around the house.
Day 1: The 20 Minute Nap
Day 1 was Sunday. I had slept barely 3 hours on Saturday night due to congestion and coughing.
By morning, which came for me at 4am, I was barely functional. But I had twin 2-year-olds to care for (4-year-old Lily had spent the night at Grandma’s house, thankfully, and wasn’t scheduled to come home until dinner time) but I was operating with very little energy.
That day was the first time the boys let me nap on the couch for a bit while they watched Cars.
It was not a luxurious, uninterrupted afternoon nap, but it felt like a gift. For 20 minutes, nobody needed me to find a missing toy, open a snack, kiss a bumped knee, or referee a fight. In fact, when I woke up, they were so quiet on the couch next to me that I thought maybe they had fallen asleep too.
When it was nap time, they came through for me again. They took 4-hour naps.
And thankfully, we had enough leftovers to get through the day without cooking.
This is the dream: food that already exists.
Sunday was about getting through the day with as little effort as possible. I rested when I could, fed everyone from what we already had, and tried not to think too far ahead.
Days 2 and 3: School & Work Still Happen
On Monday, I was still quite sick, but the kids were fine, so I sent them to school.
Lily takes the bus to preschool.
Then I take the boys to daycare. Or, as Lily has dubbed it, “baby school.” Now they all call daycare “baby school,” which is adorable until I say it to an adult who looks at me sideways.
Once I dropped them off, I grabbed a quick breakfast on the way home because I was starving. I also managed to drive to Chick-fil-A for lunch, which felt like a major accomplishment at the time. When you are sick, a drive-through meal can feel like both a practical decision and a personal victory.
Dinner was macaroni and cheese.
No one complained.
That counted as a successful evening.
By Day 3, I was still sick but improving. But I woke up with a migraine.
After dropping the kids off, I stopped by the grocery store to get our pickup order. I was not about to wander through the aisles while sick, but we needed food, and grocery pickup is one of those modern parenting conveniences I will defend forever.
I picked up the groceries and brought them home.
Then I logged on to work.
I emailed my clients to let them know I would be out sick again. I assigned a few tasks that had come in the day before and moved my meetings to later in the week.
All told, I spent about 20 minutes on work stuff.
And then I realized I had left the groceries sitting on the counter.
Thankfully, nothing disastrous happened. But it was a good reminder that being sick affects more than your energy. It affects your memory, your attention, and your ability to keep all the tabs open in your brain.
I put away the groceries and started thinking about what actually needed to be done.
What Sick-Day Triage Looks Like for Me
When it was just Lily, I used to spend sick days as though they were spare free time.
If I was home without children, I thought, I might as well catch up on the laundry, clean out a closet, organize something, or tackle all the little household tasks I never had time for on a regular day.
I know better now that I have 3 kids.
I learned a long time ago to respect my body’s need for rest. Being sick is not an unexpected day off. It is my body asking me to slow down. I want my children to learn that their bodies are worth listening to, too. Hunger, tiredness, pain, illness, and overwhelm are not inconveniences to ignore in the name of productivity. They are information.
So now I ask myself two questions:
What has to be done today?
What can wait until tomorrow?
That is my entire sick-day system.
Rest Is Part of Taking Care of My Family
The hardest part is not always the physical exhaustion. Sometimes it is the guilt.
There is a voice in my head that tells me I should be doing more. I should be working through my never-ending to-do list, folding every towel, and making sure the house looks like a functioning adult lives here.
But being sick does not make me less responsible. It changes my priority to self-care.
On a normal day, the kids have more variety at dinner. The house is cleaner. I might have the energy to read extra books at bedtime or spend more time playing on the floor. On a sick day, success looks different. Everyone is fed. Everyone is safe. The essential things are handled. I get through the day without making myself worse.
I am also learning that the kids do not need a perfect version of me every day. They need a present-enough mother who knows when to slow down. They can eat cereal for dinner. They can watch another movie. They can help themselves to snacks, wear pajamas all day, and see that listening to our bodies is incredibly important.
I want them to understand that rest is not laziness and that productivity is not a measure of their worth. I do not want them growing up believing they have to push through every physical need, answer every request immediately, or stay busy just to prove that they are doing enough. There will be plenty of time for responsibility. I also want them to know how to prioritize themselves without feeling guilty.
Occasionally I have to remind myself that rest is not something I have to earn by finishing everything first. Sometimes rest is the thing that makes it possible to keep going.
I do not want to teach them hustle culture, especially at their tender ages. I want to model something healthier: We take care of what truly needs to be done, and we do not treat exhaustion as a character flaw. We can be responsible without running ourselves into the ground.
The Things That Needed to Happen
After putting away the groceries, I decanted the kids’ snacks from the grocery pickup into containers and placed them on the bottom shelf of the pantry. This way, the kids can reach the snacks without asking me for help. They can see what is available and I do not have to get up every time someone announces that they are hungry.
Then I emptied the dishwasher, cleaned out the fridge, and loaded the dishwasher again with a smaller load.
The fridge only made the list because it was the day before trash day. Trash pickup comes first thing in the morning, so waiting and hoping to be better in the morning was not an option. It was one of the things that could not wait.
The dishwasher made the list because dishes do not improve with age.
I put some of the art the kids had made for me into my memory box. That was not urgent, but it brought me joy.
I adjusted the height of the boys’ car seats because I noticed that morning that had gotten too tall for the current setting.
I signed them up for the upcoming school picture day so I wouldn’t forget.
Then I made sure the diaper caddy would be full for the night and picked an easy dinner based on the groceries I had just gotten.
And so on.
And Then I Rested
After about 2 hours of tasks, I sat down.
Not because everything was done. It was not.
The floor still needed mopping. The laundry was not magically finished.
Usually, I refresh the kids’ bedrooms on Monday. Sheets changed, toys picked up, floors vacuumed.
That did not happen this week.
And that is okay.
This is the part that took me years to learn: a sick day is not an opportunity to play catch up.
It is a day to do what truly needs doing, then give my body some room to recover.
Sometimes it means TV all day and leftovers for dinner.
The rest can wait.
That is part of what I am teaching them. Not that we should avoid responsibility, but that responsibility includes honoring our physical limits.
When I sat down, it was in my favorite chair on the back porch in the sunlight to get some Vitamin D and fresh air. After recharging for 20 minutes, I came in to watch some true crime shows, drink some iced tea, and then take what I’m sure will be a very short nap.
There are 7 hours between baby school drop-off and Lily arriving home on the bus. That is my entire window of restoration. Then it’s back to reality.
She and I will go to baby school to get the boys. We’ll all eat something easy for dinner. I’ll put them to bed and we’ll do it again tomorrow.
With any luck, I'll be feeling better and up to managing some of the tasks I’ve been putting off.
If I’m not, I won’t.