The past few months have seemed impossible and I’m suffering from burnout. My family, which includes a 4-year-old and a 9-month-old, dealt with multiple health issues, including the flu and COVID, on top of numerous school closures, while my husband and I continued to work our full-time jobs. We also had to cancel our Christmas and vacation plans multiple times because of COVID exposures.
As a working parent with young kids, I often feel I cannot catch a break.
How is anyone with young kids in school, and then at home unexpectedly, supposed to be on top of everything in these situations? Well, the truth of the matter is we can’t be, and something has got to give.
As parents, we juggle so much and often do not have time for much-needed breaks. We are full-time parents, employees, chefs, homemakers, maids, caretakers, chauffeurs, and everything else 24 hours a day. For us, we are also dealing with a major home renovation, which of course, always involves some setbacks. The list keeps going on.
I used to go into the office multiple times a week, but now I predominantly work from home. While I don’t have the commute, I have everything else on my plate with two kids who are under five and cannot be vaccinated.
As the parent mostly home with more flexibility, a lot of the household needs end up falling on me, not to mention when my daughter’s school closes unexpectedly, I am the one whose work schedule gets disrupted. COVID might be over for some, but in my household, it is unfortunately not. We spent most of January with my daughter’s class closed due to COVID, which meant our babysitter could not come and help out.
After months of being so careful, COVID hit our household after we had just gotten over the flu. And it was extremely tough trying to keep the baby away from her older sister and vice versa. Everything seemed unmanageable, and I felt completely burnt out. For someone who regularly works out to keep my sanity levels, even that was not helping.
The mom burnout is at an all-time high because we are juggling so much and have been at this point for almost two years.
I often ask myself when things will be somewhat normal for us. I don’t expect a full return to the way things were, but I do expect some level of normalcy. Perhaps it will be when my kids can get vaccinated. At least, that can be my hope.
