How to build up your immunity when you’re an older mom with multiple young children

#1. Take baths, or meditate, or drink a cup of tea or coffee alone. The point is to be alone and chill. I know it’s hard, to find the time, to get away from the kids, to let go of responsibility and stress for twenty minutes. It’s hard and hard to justify it, until you realize you’re not so young anymore. Until every rendezvous to the kids museums and schools send you home with the flu. Until you can’t believe how much you’re getting sick. You start feeling like a heroin junkie on the couch playing cartoons for their little kids. Are you sick mommy? They ask. Yes, my throat hurts. I don’t tell them about the fever, the horrific body pains that shift each time I get a new fever. You begin to realize it’s time to take a bath, often. To take those twenty minutes. To not exercise as hard or as much as you used to, even though you see no reason not to EXCEPT that you literally do not have the energy to do it all. Just the basic stuff, cleaning, exercising, taking care of the house, the dog, playing with the kids, taking them places, grocery shopping and meal prep. Your body says NO in one way or another. Maybe it’s too late, maybe I’ve used up too much of my reserve, but it seems to me by trying to be healthy and productive as a mom I have made myself prone to sickness. I’m getting in the bath now, with a facial mask and shaving my legs. I’m drinking my water, having a glass of white wine. It’s Friday, the house is clean and all the laundry is clean. Jack and Fiona are at the park with the babysitter. The only thing I truly regret about this week is my lack of studio time, but I was sick. I miss the studio so much when I’m away.