On Scaling Back

My daughter returned from school sick yesterday afternoon. She seems to be only a little sick this time. She's not been wanting to eat yet, but she has been sleeping, demanding her baths (she requests many baths when sick for some reason), and she sounds congested. But when she's awake, she's making demands, humming, and making me play-act with her which is a relief. Since she was 4 years old, my brain has been steadily wiring itself to fear even the most simple of illnesses. She used to get a seizure before each time she got sick. When she started school it became a nightmare, often picking up whatever bugs were circulating. The last one happened in her last week of kindergarten, May of last year. But I can't shake off a sense of dread when she comes home sick. Combined with sleep deprivation (she often wakes up at night while sick, feeling a bit fussy and needing her baths to soothe), the amount of time she's sick (she never has the 24-hour ones, always 4+ days), and my limits (my damn gas tank is tiny) I know that when she is sick I am more at risk to burn out and start having problems. Anxiety will spike more, I overthink more and even have more interpersonal problems with those around me.

As recently as last month, my response to times like this was "business as usual". I would push myself harder to make it work to finish my projects in my job by starting my days very early, keeping the house clean and sanitized, and taking care of everyone. This time I want to be smarter. To stop being a perfectionist and try to do it all while running on no sleep. Today I started work at my normal hour, leaned on my husband to make me coffee, and am not prowling the house trying to make it look pristine. It's been a nice week, with the new routine here at home. My husband has been taking my daughter for 2 hours to my mother-in-law's house after her school day so I could finish my work and do some housework and cooking without the need to juggle multiple tasks at once. I am glad I had that time because now I can walk into this with energy reserves to tap into, as opposed to being depleted from the get-go. I somehow feel that this is my first true test on adapting to circumstances as opposed to always demanding the same amount of productivity out of myself. I'm hoping it works because I'm so tired of losing my wits every time my little one brings a plague home.