Waiting rooms are the great equalizer. No matter what you are waiting for, the person next to you is waiting too. You are all in the same boat. I set sail with a bunch of other moms this weekend at my pediatrician’s office “sick child” clinic. It’s like weekend hours for your doctor. Charlie’s tummy was “really hurting” so we went to get him checked out.
I knew Charlie was sick when he didn’t want to go outside to play on that beautiful Sunday and then puked in the middle of my carpeted living room floor. So, we loaded up and headed to the doctor’s office. When we arrived, almost every seat was full. As we sat down to wait with our puke bucket and Charlie’s bare feet (in our rush we forgot shoes), I noticed that the room was full of moms. Out of the 15 people waiting, only 2 had dads with them, the rest were all moms. This isn’t intended to be a stab at dads it was just curious to me that a majority were moms, with the exception of the little guy with mom, dad and grandma.
It got me thinking. As I looked around, I realized that we were all different. Different races, different age children, some had just one kid while some had multiple kids in tow, some were dressed up and some were in sweats. Some hadn’t showered in 3 days…sorry fellow moms. We had all come from different places to be there at that moment for our kids. We were all so different, but so the same.
As I looked around, everyone was cuddling their sick little one and comforting them. Some moms were wiping noses and some were holding puke buckets, others held ice packs, but we were all focused on our kiddos. You could tell from just looking around that these kids were loved and cared for. We all wanted to make our kids feel better and get back to normal. There was a certain understanding as we all looked around at each other that we all would do anything for our babies.
Being with those other moms made me feel that we were each other allies, which I think moms should be. We were all supporting each other by just being there. We could all relate to the mom dealing with the meltdown or the kid who did not want to wear a mask or the mom whose had a little one just laying on her wanting to feel better. We were all in the same boat, together.
By the time we got home 2.5 hours later, Charlie was asking for dinner and feeling much better. Did we need to go to the doctor…probably not, but there was something in my mom brain that said go. The need to do anything I could to make him feel better. And the same could be said for many of the moms there. Did they need to go to the doctor? Not all of them, but being a mom means doing whatever you think needs to be done for your baby. Being a mom also means supporting fellow moms and being there for them. I don’t know any of those other moms, but I know that they were my allies and I was theirs.
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