At Home with the Kid – Day Twenty-Three

The truth is, I'm in a crisis and full of questions.

It looked like Adi had recovered, then suddenly, without any transition, he relapsed severely. He got a fever again, started coughing very badly, started throwing up again, refused to eat anything, and would only drink with great difficulty, and then the question formed in my mind.

Am I doing something wrong?

Adi is 1 year old now, and until now, apart from one afternoon, he hasn't been sick at all. That one time was around when he was four months old, but now that I've been looking after him for 23 days, he's gotten seriously ill twice in that time.

I've thought through so many things about what could be causing this. What are the chances that the child would get sick twice in exactly these 23 days? Would this have happened even if the child wasn't with me? Am I not feeding him properly? Am I not taking good enough care of him? Isn't he sleeping enough, or would it really make such a difference that his mother is sickly?

It's a really shitty feeling to think you're giving your child everything, but apparently, something is wrong. Something that I'm doing wrong. I started to think that we should stop this whole exchange thing because it's not good for anyone. It's not good for Reni, because I can literally see the signs of child deprivation on her, but what's even worse is that I can see on the child that the time spent with his mother is not enough for him. He misses his mother coming into his room in the morning, spending the whole day with his mother instead of just a few hours, his mother putting him to bed, his mother bathing him.

A father can do anything, he can be operating at 170%, but he still can't replace a mother, and this isn't some ideology I've taken a liking to and am pushing like an idiot, but something I'm experiencing. This is reality, this is what I see.

Adi getting sick again affected me very badly, and worst of all, I got sick too. I also got a fever, I've been nauseous for 3 days, and I feel terrible.

So Adi wasn't in very good shape, so I took him to the local pediatrician, and the doctor examined him. His throat was fine, ears okay, lungs clear, which I didn't understand, because Adi was coughing with so much phlegm, but as it turned out later, this is because his nose is severely runny and he's swallowing it back, or something like that. The doctor also didn't understand what was wrong with the child, so he took a little blood from the child's finger for some 10-minute instant test to see if there was a bacterial infection, but there wasn't. Then the diagnosis was made. Adi caught some severe virus and all that could be done was to clear his nose and monitor his fever.

I have very ambivalent feelings about this whole stay-at-home situation. On the one hand, the family is amazed at how well and conscientiously I'm doing. I've heard this from my mother-in-law, my parents, Reni's sister, and my father-in-law personally told me today how much I've grown in his eyes for doing this in this way and with such quality.

I truly put everything into this. I wake up with the child every half an hour if needed, I clear his nose, change his diaper at the first sign, I play with him, I smother him with kisses, and if necessary, I walk around his room with him for hours at night to calm him down.

Then there's the other side, where I see only shortcomings and failures. The apartment is swimming, the household, compared to the standards Reni set, is run at perhaps 30%, and I think that's being generous. In my last post, I started evaluating how I'd progressed task by task. Vacuuming, laundry, dishes, etc., but I didn't have time to write about cooking, for example.

Zero. I haven't cooked for anyone in the last 23 days. I solved the food issue by ordering my food from LifeTILT FOOD for the whole family, which is a solution, but when Reni handles this, she always makes food for the child, makes food for Dórika, and if I ask, she makes it for me too.

Then there's this diet thing too. Actually, the most honest thing would be for me to set myself on fire right now, because I remember writing that dieting is totally doable even with children, it's all just a matter of willpower and determination.

Well, needless to say, what kind of diet I kept for 23 days. Grab something that's preferably ready-made, or maximum 2 minutes in the microwave and goodbye. Wine in the evening, chocolate during the day, because the former calms me down, and the latter is simply necessary. Because it feels good. I'm not ashamed to admit if I was wrong about something, and those lines about "mothers can easily stick to a diet and it's pathetic if someone can't" were indeed such a mistake. It wasn't a mistake because I wasn't right, but because it's not easy at all.

I don't know. Maybe I threw myself into this too much. Maybe I should have prepared better, but I didn't prepare because I'm used to starting anything in life, no matter what it is, if I put myself into it and focus, it works, I'll be good at it, I'll achieve success. I approached this the same way. Okay, I'll stay home with the kid for 30 days, I'll run the household too, how hard can that be? Well, now I know. But if I had known this when I committed to it, I wouldn't have committed to it, or not like this, jumping straight into the deep end.

As for the workouts. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I can't say I didn't have time for it, because I would have, but every free minute, or God forbid, free hour, when the child is sleeping, I could have worked out at home. I have a bunch of workout programs in my head, I know exactly what I could have done at home, and if anyone, I know exactly that the most energy can be gained from the diet + workout combination. But despite this, I chose to sleep or sit in an armchair because I felt like I had no strength.

I remember last year I was planning a 60 million national advertising campaign. TV, radio, billboards, online attack on all fronts, and part of this plan was a TV commercial. The commercial would have shown a mother of 3 doing her thing at home all day, taking care of the kids, feeding them, basically what every mother does and what I'm doing now at home. At the end of the day, when she had put all her kids to bed, this mother would get dressed and go for a run at 9 PM.

Aha.

One could argue that these 23 days were indeed extremely unusual, what with Reni's surgery and the child's illnesses. One could argue that if I were "just" at home with the child and nothing special was happening, then this whole thing would have gone smoothly. I could even argue that every mother started somehow and no one did it perfectly the first time, but that's not the point, and I'm not the type to make excuses. This is what life presented, and I have to deal with it. And this is just one child. There are those who raise 3-4-5 children at home, now THAT's huge respect, and who knows what else life spices things up with.

I could have asked for help from the beginning, but I didn't, because I'm the cool guy, and it looks very much like I've completely cracked under the pressure.

I don't believe motherhood is as difficult as I'm experiencing it now. But if it really is this difficult, and I'm supposed to do this for months, years, and with multiple children, then I'll raise the white flag and say okay, this is too much, I'd rather go back to work, because I'm simply not good enough for this.

Despite all its difficulties, this program gives a lot, clarifies many things around us, and I've understood many things as a result of the program.

One such understanding, and incidentally, an eternal point of contention between Reni and me, is a classic case that I assume comes up in every household.

Every month, Reni receives X forints from me in addition to the money she earns. It doesn't matter how much, that's not the point. I give her money for her to buy whatever she wants, spend it on herself, or do whatever she wants with it. The more experienced wives, who are at home with their children and not working alongside it, probably already know what this is about, and yes, it's exactly about that.

Whose money is this money now?

Reni and I always had huge arguments about this, because Reni said it was her money, to which I replied, okay, but you got it from me, so whose money is it in the end? "Mine," she replied, she works for it, because she's raising our child, running the household, and if I don't see this as work that's worth this money, then I can just go to hell.

I didn't see it. I didn't understand.

Now I understand.

So, from here, I would like to send a message to those men, those husbands, who give money to their wives in one form or another: shut up and give them that money, because this is indeed work, and no matter how much you give, believe me, it's still not enough.

Because it's work. Being at home with a child is incredibly hard work, and if someone does it for us, it's worth every penny. If there's someone who, moreover, raises your child WELL, you can't really pay them enough, no matter how much you earn.