I’ll admit it straight away: I’m one of those mothers who cried really hard when I had to take my child to daycare for the first time. A full-on Kim Kardashian ugly crythat is.
I kept it dry during the intake interview, which was quite an achievement and which briefly made me believe that I would be able to survive until I got home. Didn’t happen. Who was I kidding? I started crying when I had to hand her over to the nurse, kept crying all the way home and then sat on the couch crying for two hours until I could pick her up again. Yes, it was just two hours of adjustment. It turns out that motherhood not only comes with leakages and acute incontinence, but also with the necessary sense of drama. And then when I picked it up I was told that the lady had slept the entire two hours. So no problems at all. Mothers, on the other hand… I thought it was quite cruel that I had to leave my little baby with complete strangers because I had to go back to work. But that wasn’t the only cruel thing about the whole shelter thing, I soon learned.
Two weeks after that first day of adjustment, she became ill for the first time. Yep, a catch virus. And no, it wasn’t a case of mild runny nose. It was abject misery: a double ear infection, fever and general food refusal. Everything was brought into the house. From antibiotics to nose drops and from suppositories to that crazy nasal aspirator. The cruel thing about those kinds of tools is that they make your child better, but they see them as Spartan instruments of torture. In any case, I have never been able to give my baby some nose drops or a suppository without her screaming. Antibiotics were also screechingly refused. It really sounded like I was abusing her. Quite tiring, I can tell you. And then I haven’t even mentioned the fact that she wasn’t allowed to go to daycare because of the virus she contracted at daycare! That’s super cruel, isn’t it?
Two days later I got sick myself. That’s nature, I read on the Internet. Babies benefit from touching their mothers. We then produce antibodies for them that they receive through breastfeeding. I think that’s extremely cruel. So mothers are always fucked, that’s one of the laws of nature. By the way, I wasn’t surprised that I got sick myself. Have you ever tried one of those nasal aspirators? You then literally suck those germs from your child’s nose straight into your own throat. I am not a virologist, but I think Diederik Gommers will agree that it is a pretty clumsy system.
When I complained about it to a friend, I was told bluntly: ‘It was like this for us for the first year and a half.’ So those shelter viruses. ONE AND A HALF YEAR! And sure enough: our child got better, was allowed to go back to daycare and got sick again two weeks later. Stomach flu this time. And that week our washing machine broke down. I’m running out of superlatives now, but you can probably imagine how cruel I thought that was. It turned out to be a pattern: child can go to daycare again – child gets sick – child is not allowed to go to daycare, arrange that with your work – parents also get sick – child is better –repeat. Shelter viruses are a vicious cycle of cruelty.
Tara (29) is mother of daughter Rosie (6 months). Follow her momlife via Instagram.com/tarastokdijk.
2023-11-20 18:09:18
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