This week hit me for 6. It all started last week Friday when Alba woke up with a slight cough. I was a bit worried, but I know babies are supposed to get sick from time to time, and the weather is currently a bit windier and chillier as we roll into Autumn, so I didn’t think much about it. However, by Saturday morning the mild cough had developed into full on choking coughing fits with a fluctuating fever and runny nose, and mummy panic slowly started to creep in.
As luck would have it, last week I also received the most work requests since I started freelance translating. I’m a freelancing newbie and generally an anxious person, so while everyone says that the main benefit of freelancing is that you decide when you work, I don’t like to turn down work. I always worry that if I turn this project down and I don’t get any requests the next week I would regret it, or the Project manager would think I’m not serious about life and not send me anymore.
I know you’re thinking “no they’d understand”, and I’m here to say I was a project manager for four years and unless you were one of my main linguists, then I may have understood in the moment but the next time I wanted to contact you I’d remember “hmm last time she couldn't do it, maybe I should try someone else first". So generally, once I can make a deadline and you have work for me, the answer is “yes please, send it my way.”
Then of course, you can only suck mucus out of your baby’s nose, sorry non-parent readers who find this yucky, for so long before you yourself get the cold. I know there’s a suction-type instrument for this, and I applaud the parents who are able to use it, but I am not one of them. The suck-and-spit method is the quickest, less scream inducing one for me.
Needless to say, the week was a blur of rocking Alba, phone calls to her GP, NHS 111, the pharmacist, going for COVID swabs (all negative thankfully), video calls with her doctor because visits are restricted due to the pandemic, and giving her baby paracetamol whenever the fever spiked, which is not an easy task as she hates it. Hasani has to hold her down while I struggle to get the syringe in her mouth as she writhes and screams, with her jaw clenched tighter than a pitbull. And honestly, I don’t blame her, I hated baby Panadol too as a child. Does anyone actually like that sickly sweet artificial cherry taste they make all baby medicine taste like? The scent alone makes me feel sick.
Then there were the sleepless nights with coughing fits and runny noses, and the translations and proofreadings which somehow got done in the pockets of time at 4am, while Alba napped upright on me, or while making soup only to throw it away after or give it to Hasani because Alba refused to eat it. There were zero workouts this week and dinner was cereals one night and scrambled eggs for lunch another day. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I was also sick but “ain’t nobody got time for that”, I thought as I slathered vicks on my nose and forehead and downed 2 paracetamols with a glass of water (by water I mean coffee).
After I submitted my last project on Friday afternoon, while Alba napped upright on me and the humidifier fogged up the room, I decided to scroll through my social media to unwind…bad idea. I saw that a friend and her husband welcomed their third child in 3 years this week. I thought “Wait what!?!” I’m still trying to catch myself from my 1 a whole year later! People do this x 3?!? Then it dawned on me that my mother did this x 4, and Hasani’s mum x 9 all the while getting degrees and becoming a judge. I suddenly felt like the most incompetent mother ever and Hasani, being the good husband he is, consoled me with a hug and a glass of wine.
