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Here's the scene: you and your other half tested positive for COVID a few days ago and, as you ride out the peak of the infection, you can barely lift your head from the pillow.
Then your baby starts crying.
My wife and I experienced this moment recently when we were both suffering from COVID-19. When you're in the thick of it, COVID can be quite scary.
My wife had already done most of the childcare that day. It was my turn. I dragged myself out of bed to attend to our youngest daughter, who is only 10 months old.
It hurt and it was painful, but my basic instincts kicked in: If I wasn't getting up, how would our child be cared for?
After a few hours I had to go back to bed and my wife got up to look after the baby and our eldest daughter who is four.
We kept up this tag-teaming routine for the next 24 hours as our symptoms started to subside.
What can parents do?
COVID-19 has presented us with enormous challenges – from lockdown and working from home, to home learning for our children — and to a large extent we've overcome many of them.
But the coronavirus threat has not gone away. Vaccinated or not, Australians are still getting sick and national daily case numbers remain in the tens of thousands.
Yet have you ever asked yourself this: What happens if both parents are sick with COVID-19 and unable to care for their kids? Or worried about passing it on? What resources are available to parents facing this situation?
Chiang Lim, chief executive of the Australian Childcare Alliance, worries about the toll the pandemic is having on single parents in particular.
"In some families, particularly those of single parents and those with limited or no family support, have struggled to care for their children when they have been diagnosed with COVID-19," she says.
Once I had sufficiently recovered from my COVID illness, I called the NSW Government's 1300 hotline for advice. But a COVID call centre operator told me there was nothing practical he could have offered.
As parents of dependent children, when COVID struck, we were on our own.
Help dries up when COVID strikes
From the moment your child is born there's a lot of work to do: Changing nappies, feeding, settling to sleep, laundry... it goes on and on.
In many families, once the child is six to 12 months old both parents return to work and drop their children off to day care or pre-school.
And there's usually a grandparent or even an uncle or aunt who can step in if something unpredictable happens.
But help is not so easy to come by when COVID strikes.
You're forced into isolation. If family support is available many older family members are wary of being in contact with potentially infected children and may decide to stay away (or their children want to keep them away from the risk).
If both parents are in bed with a fever, chills and fatigue, and are unable to move, you have a problem.
Until recently even uninfected family members were required to isolate for a week.
Rule changes in NSW and Victoria last month meant children in those states are now allowed to return to school or childcare as long as their RAT is negative.
However not all states have moved to looser rules.
Depending on where you live around the country, you may also receive a phone call from your state or territory government checking up on you and offering guidance on where you can get help.
But what if the assistance required is just basic childcare? You're probably on your own.
The commonsense advice from various parenting websites is to plan ahead. WIRED, for example, suggests you war game the scenario ahead of time:
- Identify nearby friends or family members who can help and are not in a high-risk population
- Post potential caregiver contact information prominently so that emergency responders can find it. If you have no one to ask, a hospital can usually advise you on community resources for families in crisis.
Don't be unprepared
I wanted to write about this experience because when it happened to me, I was caught off-guard. I was shocked I hadn't thought through the scenario and figured other families may be in the same situation.
Fortunately, because my wife and I didn't get too sick, we fumbled our way through it. But it was close.
So how many families are experiencing a similar scenario right now? How many are not coping? It's impossible to know.
The website Raising Children told the ABC it is simply too early to get a sense of the scale of the problem. It's playing out before our eyes.
The NSW COVID call centre operator I spoke to said he hadn't received many calls from families looking for childcare help as caregivers battled COVID.
But that makes sense to me: In the thick of my symptoms I certainly didn't have the energy or presence of mind to wait on hold for assistance.
There's an old saying in medicine that you need to worry about the patients that aren't complaining.
But notwithstanding the availability of vaccines and variants that produce milder symptoms, the fact is that COVID-19 remains a threat.
And many families are suffering in silence.