This morning, I saw this Zhihu question:
Most of the answers below criticized the questioner for not being generous enough. Thinking of my own new crown experience last week, I felt that there might be some misunderstandings. So I tried to answer the following. Everyone has different experiences and personal opinions. Criticisms and corrections are welcome:
Those who say you are not satisfied seriously underestimate the difficulty of a positive patient taking care of another positive three-year-old boy overnight.
What you are feeling is completely normal.
However, first of all, it is worthy of gratitude that your husband can fly all the way back to take care of the three meals a day for you two. Compare that to the news on the Internet, where the wife was pregnant and the husband's family moved to the countryside overnight and emptied the refrigerator of all the fruits. Your husband is completely qualified. He flew back overnight to take care of your three meals a day, and he also wore a mask, ate separately, and slept separately. There was no problem with that.
But the problem is that he is worried that he will be infected and let you take care of a sick baby day and night by yourself.
I personally strongly disagree with this. Our family just experienced the new crown epidemic last week, which was equivalent to the annihilation of the entire army. Let me talk about how ordinary families deal with this situation.
Let me give you some background: We have three children, two are my own and one is my nephew. My mother is also at home and takes care of us three meals a day. My husband travels a lot for business and comes back once a week.
After the policy change, we haven't paid much attention to it. Our children usually go out to play. My husband came back from a business trip last Saturday. At this time, no one had any symptoms. But the very next day, my husband and Dabao had fever at the same time. Yes, we can’t figure out where the virus came from, and we have no preparations at home. My husband took the test and both of them were positive.
Although we were nervous, we did not feel as if we were facing a big enemy. We just quickly divided the house into partitions. However, there were only two rooms in the house, and even the sofa bed in the living room was freed up. The infected Dabao and her husband were assigned to the master bedroom because they basically lie down and the master bedroom has plenty of sunlight. My nephew went back to his mother (my sister). My mother slept in the second bedroom, and Xiaobao and I were assigned to the sofa bed in the living room.
My husband’s fever was not very high at first. He thought he had a mild case. Considering that there was a baby at home, our division of labor that night was that my husband took care of the six-and-a-half-year-old baby (taking temperature, giving water and antipyretics, and sleeping with him), and I took care of the 4-year-old baby (he and I didn’t have any symptoms at this time).
I think this division of labor is the best choice at the moment.
That night, Xiaobao and I had a good sleep in the living room. Xiaobao slept soundly because he slept on the sofa bed. My husband seemed to wake up twice that night. Before going to bed, I had brought all the antipyretics, water, and other emergency supplies into the master bedroom and placed them beside the bed, because I hoped that my husband would not have to worry too much at night and would be prepared. That night, I heard him walking around in the living room, probably feeding Dabao some water. I wanted to get up and help, but I was too lazy to do it, because I knew my husband could basically handle it, and he would definitely call me if there was an emergency. Fortunately, Dabao's fever subsided after he was given antipyretics.
During the day on the third day, Dabao's fever reached 39.5 or 39.6 degrees Celsius again. He was given antipyretics once, but the fever was still around 38 degrees Celsius, so he became very noisy that day. He was like this when he was a child. When he was in good health, he was very well-behaved and sensible. But once he was sick and uncomfortable, he would be very, very noisy, and designated his mother to accompany him. Unfortunately, at this time I developed a cough and was infected. Fortunately, the child's father no longer has a fever after yesterday's battle and feels much better.
So, during the day on the third day, it was me who stayed with Dabao in bed. Of course, it was impossible to lie in bed honestly. Dabao had a fever and felt uncomfortable all over. He had a sore throat, sore legs, and a stuffy nose. This seriously affected his sleep and he couldn't sleep at all.I had a terrible headache and couldn't sleep. What should I do? At this time, I had to accompany him to do what he wanted to do. He loved listening to stories, so I found a book and read to him while we lay together. I read the book like this for about an hour, and my throat almost started to smoke. But he felt uncomfortable, and if he didn't listen to the story, he would feel even more uncomfortable and growl, so I insisted on telling him the story.
On this day, I tried my best to tell Dabao stories. From the books, I heard stories about my own childhood, and stories about my own grandfather’s death. They were basically exaggerated and told to him. Because he only stopped making noises when listening to stories. For this reason, I almost finished telling (editing) all the stories of the eighteen generations of my ancestors... In this way, he still occasionally told me, Mom, I feel uncomfortable, uncomfortable... I felt very distressed, so I worked harder to make up stories and tell them...
In the end, I was finally speechless. It may be that I used my voice too much, or it may be that the new coronavirus has launched an onslaught. Then I told Dabao in a dumb voice, Mommy can’t speak anymore, let’s lie down and sleep for a while. Finally he nodded and we both fell into a deep sleep. On this day, my baby's father cooked for us, made chicken soup, took care of the baby, and walked the puppy. He did a really good job. In fact, he will be traveling for most of the second half of 2022, so this is almost the only week when our family is completely together. Fortunately, although we usually spend less time together and more apart, our relationship is still there. The most important thing is that we can both cook and coax the baby, so we didn’t find it difficult to get through this illness.
That night, my husband felt sorry for me because I had spent the whole day with Dabao during the day, and he couldn’t bear for me to bother him again at night. So that night, he slept with Dabao. I stayed with Xiaobao, who had no symptoms, but Dabao refused to agree at first. Finally, we told him that my father and I would take turns to stay with him, and that my mother would have a good sleep at night so that she would have the energy to take care of him during the day. Otherwise, if her mother did not rest well, it would be difficult to recover from the illness, so she would have to sleep during the day and no one would accompany him. Although Dabao was still unhappy, he finally agreed. That night, I slept with Xiao Baoan again.
A few days later, my nephew also had a fever, and my mother also began to feel uncomfortable. Although my husband did not have a fever, he gradually began to have a headache, a sore throat, blisters in his mouth, and could hardly speak. Fortunately, I gradually recovered at this time. In the past few days, we have almost taken turns taking care of everyone. Those with mild symptoms will take care of those with severe symptoms, those with better symptoms will cook, and those with severe symptoms will sleep and eat. Although there were many children, fortunately there were still enough manpower at home. Therefore, it only took a week for everyone to basically recover. This is how we got through the first round of COVID-19.
The fundamental reason why your husband's behavior makes you uncomfortable is that he may not have any idea of "a positive patient taking care of another positive child, struggling to get up 7 or 8 times a night."
My husband and I both have experience. When our two children were young, they often got sick together, especially when the younger one was over 1 year old and the eldest child was only over 3 years old. Every time we got sick, we became comrades-in-arms.
When the baby gets sick, we often need to divide the work carefully. Usually I take care of Dabao and he takes care of Xiaobao. The most common situation at that time was that the two babies could not sleep at the same time because of discomfort, such as a stuffy nose, and would wake up crying in the middle of the night. Each of us would carry the other to the living room. Sometimes we would switch arms, he would hold the older baby, and I would hold the younger one. Just like that, both of us were exhausted. Not to mention that you, a patient, have to take care of a tossing little Yang all day and all night.
After you mentioned to him that you had a headache that was going to "explode" and expressed your thoughts, your husband directly said that if you don't get infected, everyone will die together. I think this is too pessimistic, indicating that he is very afraid of this disease, but in fact, when living under the same roof, the possibility of him not being infected is very low, haha. It’s true that our whole family has been infected. Of course, this may be related to our failure to take disinfection and other measures.
His rejection and defensiveness were very obvious.There is no need for you to quarrel or get into trouble at this time. Because he has first proven the relationship between you with actions (flying back, eating three meals a day), but he underestimated the pain of your illness and the difficulty of taking care of your children. This shows that the relationship between you may just be a problem of information gap, and there is no need to rise to a higher level.
Of course, if you forcefully give your child to him at this time, he will not be able to get sick by then. He will not only blame you in his heart, but also blame himself for the consequences of his hard work. What’s more terrible is: your family may not even have a cook.
So the best way at the moment is: express gratitude, explain your feelings, and rest.
Step one: Express gratitude
Express sincere gratitude to your husband for his efforts in the past few days. Although husband and wife should take care of each other, this does not mean that there is no need to express gratitude, because expressing gratitude can make the husband think that what he has done is worthwhile.
People have a need to be seen. When you express gratitude, you are "seeing" him and his dedication and efforts to this family. This is a necessary step.
Step 2: Explain your feelings
It is undeniable that the degree of pain caused by the new crown is different for everyone. Our eldest child is the most severely ill in our family. On the contrary, our second child has not had any symptoms from beginning to end, only a few coughs that are not painful or itchy. If I hadn't been paying close attention, I might have completely ignored it. So we have always focused on the eldest child. Even though we as a couple also have a lot of pain, his father sleeps with him at night and I play with him during the day, so we can both get adequate rest and transition. In addition, my mother has been taking care of us, so we don’t find it difficult.
You can explain to your husband that your symptoms are very serious: a splitting headache, and you just hope he can take over. It’s not that he is not good enough, but that he underestimated your pain level. You don’t want him to get infected, but you really have limited energy. If you don’t rest, the disease may not be cured, and if it becomes serious, it will be over. In short, don't blame, explain your feelings.
Step 3: Give up and take a rest
I completely understand how it feels to get up seven or eight times a night to have children, because this is the norm for me to have two children in three years. So I really hope that you take a good rest, it's very, very important to you.
If your child really has trouble calming down during the day, ask his father to watch TV with him in the living room for a while, so that you can take the opportunity to rest. Let me tell you, after all the books I read to my kids and the many games I played, TV worked best in the end. During the two or three days they were sick, they watched more TV than usual. At this time, don’t worry so much. If it can make the children feel better, just let them see. It’s not long-term anyway, so you can get comfortable as long as you want. This way you can catch up on sleep during the day, have the energy to spend time with your baby at night, and your husband can find ways to help you both.
In short, your husband is basically qualified, and you don’t have to wonder whether you are not generous enough to be easily satisfied. You have to take care of your children when you are sick. You have every reason to feel sad, and you have every reason to obtain further support and understanding from your husband. I just took a look at the problem log. It has been 4 days. I believe you have overcome the difficulty.
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