Sick Maybelle and the work/life balance

This shit is hard.

We are very, very fortunate that Maybelle has been a robustly healthy child.  Probably sort of unbelievably healthy.  She almost never gets sick.  That has changed in the last seven days.  Last Thursday she got sent home from school because of a fever.  In the two times I've taken her to the pediatrician, I've been reassured that nothing dangerous is happening, and that's been useful, because there have been many moments I've thought, "Is now when I'm supposed to call 911?"

I've felt explicitly unqualified to be a parent.  The experimental nature of this whole parenting project has been quite clear to me.  Friends with kids have been constant resources during this time.

Some things I've learned:

• Maybelle being in pain is awful.  It's awful, and I know that all she has is a nasty--but not at all dangerous--virus of some sort (although at 4am that virus sometimes, in my mind, becomes the not-yet-discovered leukemia).
• Sleeping is better that crying in pain, but it, too, can be very freaky for me.  She fell asleep Monday at 5:30pm and didn't get out of bed again until Wednesday morning.  She woke up periodically to take Advil and to drink from her sippy cup, but then she went right back to sleep.
• Advil is a miracle drug.  I want to write the company a letter.  It eases her breathing, brings her skin down from the flaming heat it has otherwise, allows her to relax.  Her pediatrician gave me the go-ahead to keep using it:  it's isn't making her heal any faster, but it's making her comfortable, and there's nothing wrong with that.
• The Target no-drip sippy cup is also a kind of miracle.  She's been sleeping with it clasped in her arms.  She can drink without sitting up.
• This is all much less complicated for me because she's an only child. When she wants to lie in the bed "snuggling" (which we're doing right now--it means she's mostly, although not completely, asleep, and my body is pressed against hers while I'm reading or typing on the computer), we can do it.  If child #2 were wandering around the house, this wouldn't be possible.

I've also been getting good practice in prioritizing work responsibilities.  I've gotten all the major things done this week, but because of limited available childcare (and let's face it, limited financial resources to pay for childcare that's over and above what we're paying for her preschool), I've had to reschedule meetings, rush in late to meetings, start class late, advise students over email rather than in person, and be less prepared for lots of things than I'd like to be.  So far that's working out, but it's challenging.

There's a larger political point that I could make here, one about the fact that everybody has a job and a life, that all of us are trying to manage this balance and we need more structures in place to support us in doing so.  But right now I don't have it in me.  I'm worn out.

Update:  I'm canceling a sort of important meeting to take her back to the pediatrician today.  In writing this post I discovered that I am actually more worried than I was allowing myself to realize.