I had gotten a somewhat alarming text from my mom the day before while I was still at work. She had been watching my son. She told me that he was getting sicker as the day went on, and she was worried. He seemed to be wheezing. Fortunately, it was about time for me to leave work anyway. I found him at home on the couch with my husband, looking quite pathetic. Sure enough, my son was sick. He was coughing a lot. It was scary.
The next morning, I was awoken as my husband left for work. Soon after, I heard my son coughing on the baby monitor. He seemed to be wheezing again — and badly. I rushed into his room to make sure he was okay. We went downstairs to wait it out until his pediatrician’s office opened for the day and I could call to make an appointment. He kept coughing so hard that he couldn’t keep anything down. I worried he wasn’t getting enough air.
I wasn’t due into work that day until early to mid afternoon, so I was able to take him to the doctor. It was about the time we were leaving the house that my phone started to blow up, so to speak. A police officer had been shot while answering a 911 call. In my line of work, that means all hands on deck. In another life, I might have just gone into work right then and there. But that was before I had a kid. And a sick one at that.
It did not take my son’s doctor long to diagnose him with croup. Apparently, the wheezing I was so concerned about wasn’t wheezing at all. It was a stridor, one of the telltale signs of croup. My son was uncharacteristically clingy in the doctor’s office. He quietly laid in my arms in a way he had barely done since he was a newborn. I had never seen him so sick. The doctor ordered a steroid for him. But before the nurse came to give it to him, I called in sick to work. I didn’t hesitate. My baby clearly wanted his mama. He needed his mama. I was off the phone before the nurse made it to us.
It was about that time I learned the police officer who had been shot on the job had died. I felt a pang of guilt. I knew my co-workers would barely have their heads above water at this point. But then I thought of the officer. Did he have kids? I would learn later that he did, but in that moment, I knew I needed to be with my son.
I have thought about that day a lot in the weeks that have followed. I have thought about how that one day has come to symbolize a new way of life for me. So much of my adult life has revolved around my work. It determined where I went to college and my major. My work was the reason I moved out of state after college, and it was the reason I moved to all the places I have lived since. It was how I met my husband.
I have thought of my work as my first true love, however troubled my relationship with my career might be. For it, I have been awake at all hours of the day and night. For it, I have worked all imaginable shifts (and some unimaginable ones). For it, I have sacrificed dinners with my husband, nights out with the girls, weekend getaways, family vacations and holidays with them, too. I have given up more than I care to recall right now.
But I am a mom now. And it has changed my life more than I could have possibly imagined. More than I could have predicted. More than any book I could have read would have told me to expect.
I know it was only one day of work missed, however big or small in my field. But when I had a child, I knew he had to be my first priority. I knew my son had to come before all else. And on that day, he did. Before my co-dependent relationship with my work. Before myself. Before anything else. And that means everything.
