So — there was no escape in the end. The swine flu has hit the Nether­lands really hard the last cou­ple of weeks, and although I stuck my head in the sand and hoped we would stay clear of it: broad-scale vac­ci­na­tions are sched­uled to start Nov 24th, we would of course each get an injec­tion and after that we would be home free.

Now. Well. That was kind of wish­ful think­ing more than a plan.

Because yes­ter­day it started to hap­pen: Muu­u­uum, I have a sore throat.… Muuum, I’m tired… Two hours later I sat with a very sick child in my arms. And moth­ers being what moth­ers are, and I no dif­fer­ent from the rest, noth­ing else mat­tered any­more. A pow­er­ful thing, this flu, it really hits when it hits.  Know­ing that there is a very small but still a real risk it can poten­tially even kill per­fectly healthy peo­ple of course also makes it an out­right scary expe­ri­ence to see your most loved one have it.

The obvi­ous con­se­quence was of course that my well-thought out work plan for the week was out the win­dow and swapped for one totally arranged around what now had to come first, sec­ond and third: TLC 24/7 and all else I can give to help her through this, includ­ing the readi­ness every sec­ond to act, should she turn out to need med­ical attention.

And I am sure that I share this with all moth­ers out there. That re-prioritizing hap­pens instantly — you just do that.  No mat­ter how many items were marked URGENT in bright red on that care­fully worked out To Do-list, no mat­ter how ambi­tious we feel when everyone’s healthy. At the time of mak­ing the plan­ning last Fri­day, it would have been com­pletely impos­si­ble to imag­ine I would not pay imme­di­ate atten­tion to exe­cu­tion as of Mon­day morn­ing, as I am a fan of plan­ning and struc­ture — and delivery.

I’d of course lie if I said that it does not at all mat­ter that my work week sud­denly was not going to hap­pen — of course it mat­ters; there are impor­tant things for my busi­ness that now will have to wait a bit, net­work­ing events that will be missed, as well as that bi-weekly choir reherseal that does noth­ing for my busi­ness, but won­ders for me and my well being.

But each time such a sit­u­a­tion arises, I am so amazed to see — no, to really feel — that it is a re-prioritizing in the heart, not with the head. I’m sure every Mum out there under­stands what I mean. It has con­se­quences, some things I am dis­ap­pointed I will sim­ply miss. But OK. So be it. The world will still turn, the com­pany will not instantly fall apart and I rest in the con­vic­tion that I need to focus on what mat­ters most. Period.

I am quite a fem­i­nist and have been known to be a vocal sup­porter of the view that men and women, fathers and moth­ers, should share this respon­si­bil­ity equally for their chil­dren, and equally ‘sac­ri­fice’ their careers. There should be no auto­matic assump­tion — as admit­tedly there is in our fam­ily — that the woman should be the one tak­ing it on herself.

But truth be told: since I have become a mother myself, I have realised that in this kind of sit­u­a­tion, I do not want to be the one leav­ing in the morn­ing and won­der dur­ing the day from a dis­tance how she is doing. I want to be the one on the couch hold­ing her hand. Biol­ogy or not — that is just the way I feel, and as much as I still want equal­ity in soci­ety, I’ll stand for that feeling.

Luck­ily daugh­ter and I still had an OK night (thanks to some Tamil­flu, lots of lemon­ade and even more parac­eta­mol) and have made it through the day (thanks to a com­fort­able couch, an abun­dant stock of DVDs and — thank God — a well-stocked fridge) with­out too much suf­fer­ing. Yes, pre­cious is clearly sick and this flu is clearly nasty, but so far she’s rid­ing out the storm quite well.  Thank God. First day over.

And luck­ily — it is actu­ally still pos­si­ble to do quite a lot.  To take a phonecall, fire off an email, in between giv­ing sips of drink, mak­ing tem­per­a­ture mea­sure­ments, giv­ing cud­dles and chang­ing the DVD. It is pos­si­ble to do what I do now: to ham­mer away at a new blog post, now that she has fallen into a rest­less sleep, and I can take lit­tle breaks in the writ­ing to check on her when needed. So I do feel con­fi­dent I will still get at least those very most urgent urgent mat­ters worked off that list in spite of it all, actu­ally almost effort­lessly and totally in between.

Mod­ern tech­nol­ogy, and hav­ing cho­sen the risky but free career of an entre­pre­neur, of course facil­i­tates this flex­i­bil­ity, as I, as self-employed, am priv­i­leged not tied to an office or to office hours. Very under­stand­ably one of the main rea­sons — is my guess any­way– so many of my fel­low car­ing and ambi­tious Mums out there have cho­sen to start their own busi­ness or a WAHM freelance/parttime from home. We can have the cake and eat it.

Now. Please wish me luck — because if I now come down myself now with that smack-bang fever, I’ll nei­ther be able to care for my lit­tle girl, blog nor tick off that list for my busi­ness.….…. So I sup­posed I am back to where I started — some­what naively stick­ing my con­vic­tion that I’ll sill tbe home free. Time will tell.

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Thanks for com­ing to the Mum­my­Mug blog. Soon we will start full fledge our blog and update you about the first pro­duc­tion, the actions, the new dis­trib­u­tors and all that makes Mum­my­Mug the safe hot drink solu­tion for you! We’ll keep you posted!

Thanks, the Mum­my­Mug team.

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