Dual Mom Duty: I’m Caring For My Parents And My Daughter

It’s a sobering moment in a person’s life, the time when the tables turn and you have to start caring for your own parents. It’s not a moment that I was prepared for, or expected to find myself in anytime soon. But that didn’t stop it from happening when a family medical emergency left me torn between helping my parents and caring for my daughter.

My own mother had her in-the-middle moment the day her father passed away. He was so strong and so in control. I was in fifth grade when he had a heart attack while out chopping wood on his farm. When she and her siblings lost him, they suddenly became responsible for caring for their mother, as he had always done.

In the years after, I watched as my mother juggled her growing kids and the needs of her own mom. My grandmother suffered from severe health problems. She would spend weeks in the hospital, my mom at her side. We kids got to be teenagers, so it’s not like my mom had to hire babysitters or worry about getting us to and from school. My dad was always there to help. But it was still an intense amount of stress for a mother of three teens to deal with, caring for a parent who desperately wanted to be independent but physically wasn’t capable.

I think the only reason that I see this struggle now, that I understand the difficult time my mother was going through, is because I finally hit that moment where I was torn between taking care of my mom and taking care of my daughter.

We had a recent health emergency in my family. It included a scary couple of days, an intense surgery and over a week in the hospital. I sat in that hospital room with my mother all day for almost a week straight. Evenings, my husband did his best to entertain our little one. They went and saw the new Ice Age movie. They had a “Rock Star Party” that included blue nail polish and fake tattoos. They went to parks, ate pizza and generally did anything to excite a four-year-old girl who is angry that her mother hasn’t had dinner with her in days.

(Photo: Sense)

All of those activities worked to varying degrees. My daughter was having fun. But when I would finally come home late at night, after the last doctor’s rounds and doses of morphine, she would cling to me. She wanted to sleep in bed with me, a request that we don’t typically indulge but I couldn’t say no to. If I dropped her off at daycare, she was upset to see me go, a problem that I hadn’t seen in years. One night, I asked what she wanted to do, and my rambunctious little girl begged to cuddle on the couch with a movie. It was obvious that my time away from home and my stress when I got there was affecting my daughter.

This moment, this in-the-middle moment when we’re responsible for our older family members and our children at the same time, isn’t a new phenomenon. I remember my grandmother telling me stories of her trips to the grocery store when my mom was little. My mom, her twin brother, and her little sister were all in the cart, making it almost impossible to fit food in. And my great-grandmother and great-aunt who lived with the family at the time (and happened to be blind) were attempting to push a second cart and running in to every shelf or display in the store. She told me that she basically had five children to deal with. For years, elderly family members lived in my mom’s big farm house and my grandmother took care of them.

My mom and dad are young people. They still have years of taking care of their elderly relatives, all while working and helping their kids and grandkids. But it is hard to think that I too have years ahead of stopping by to check on relatives every day, making sure they have enough groceries. It’s scary to think about the moments when my parents, who are still my biggest support system, will need me to step up to the plate and play the role of the strong one.

I’ve had my first taste of that in these last couple weeks. I got to explain all the quirks and special requests to nurses and patient care reps. I got to take notes as doctors describe procedures that I’ll need a dictionary to figure out once they leave. I had to sit by and watch someone I love dearly struggle to sit up straight in their bed or feed themselves. And I got to do it all while my daughter’s sadness sits in the back of my mind, making me feel guilty for staying away from home for so long.

I realize that all of us have our own stories of dual mom duty. I hope you’ll share yours in the comments. Every parent has that moment, but I don’t know that it’s universality makes it any easier.

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