This happens in our house with nightmarish regularity. My son started nursery earlier this year, and, as a result of close contact with other humans in a confined space after spending half his life in pandemic lockdown, he is picking up seemingly every bug imaginable. 

Actually getting any work done with a sick 2 year old at home is almost impossible. My son becomes extra needy and clingy when he’s feeling under the weather and pretty much only wants me to be looking after him. (Which I try to make the most of; one day I know he’ll be a teenager and likely not spending time with me!) Once he’s well again (which usually takes about a week), normal service can resume. 

Having been on this merry-go-round of illness, wellness, illness, wellness a fair few times now, I’ve developed some coping strategies. I’m a routine-lover at heart (although having a baby has definitely instilled more go-with-the-flow ability into me!) and initially I found the unwell child upheaval a real struggle. I think that was also exacerbated by the fact that I work 100% from home now, so the lines between ‘work’ and ‘home’ time are blurry – the 2 things fight for my focus enough already without adding a clingy, snotty 2 year old into the mix. 

1. Tell people – they’ll understand

The first few times that my son was at home poorly while I was working, I tried to carry on with work as if everything was normal. These days I tell colleagues and even customers when I’m having to swap the laptop for the calpol syringe. Most people have been unwell, and most people have family, so most people will completely understand when work has to take a back seat because of a poorly child. I’ve learned that to say “I’m really sorry, I need to move this meeting because my child is poorly today” isn’t me being a failure today, it’s just me managing others’ expectations of what I can achieve today (as well as my own!). 

2. Spread out your online meetings 

Now that I work from home, I find myself having a lot more meetings than I used to. The nature of my role means that I need to collaborate often with lots of different people to get work done, and because I can’t ‘bump into’ anyone for this I do have to schedule the time in. I used to have a habit of putting lots of meetings back to back in my calendar. My theory was that if I grouped them all together I was somehow maximizing my time. What really happened was by the fourth meeting in a row my brain was totally shot and I didn’t have enough time to complete any actions arising from those meetings.

Worse, when my son got poorly, I’d have to rearrange all those meetings, which itself is a pretty big time/productivity drain. Now I try to make sure that I avoid bunching up lots of meetings together, so that if I do have to throw out my day, I have a lot less to rearrange and a lot less “Apologies” messages to send. 

3. Take a hard line with priorities  

If my son is at home poorly, I do still check my emails every so often to make sure I’m not missing anything important. I’m a lot more rigorous now with what I consider ‘important’ though. If that question, or idea, or request can wait until tomorrow or even longer, it absolutely gets deferred. Falling for the “Oh that’s a quick question, I’ll just answer that now…” trick invariably lands you with more next actions than you bargained for in my experience, and then you’re back to the stressful mum-work juggle.  

Throwing out your schedule completely for a few days can seem daunting and stressful, but letting go of the things that can wait really helps. Once the normal routine is back in the swing it’s surprisingly easy to catch up and get back in a good place… ready to throw everything out again for the next illness!