'My kids were worried about me getting it': Meet the frontline mothers fighting Covid-19
Aideen Cahill, who works at Waterford University Hospital as an ICU and critical care physiotherapist, with a photograph of her sons Daire, Conor and Eoin. Picture: Patrick Browne
It feels more important than ever to celebrate our mammies, following a turbulent year where they’ve been needed like never before. And, with more than 76% of EU healthcare workers being female, it's likely that plenty of Irish mothers working on our frontlines will be celebrated this weekend.
Aideen Cahill will be marking Mother’s Day quietly at her home in Waterford this Sunday with her three sons Daire (seven), Eoin (10), and Conor (13), far from the PPE gear she's been donning while working as a physiotherapist in University Hospital Waterford’s ICU and Covid wards.
“We didn’t ever think it would drag on this long. It’s been a terrible year in a lot of ways,” she says. Things have been tough in the hospital since Christmas, but numbers are thankfully starting to dip. When the team first started admitting critically-ill Covid patients last year, however, things weren’t so hopeful.
“Initially there would have been a huge fear factor because none of us knew what Covid was. A big part of that was the fear of bringing it home to your family and my kids were worried about me getting it. They needed a lot of reassurance. You don’t want it to impact them but it really does.”
As time went on, Aideen's own fears eased as talks of vaccine distribution increased. She received hers last month but is still dealing with a different pressure: homeschooling.
While her husband has been at home with the kids, his full-time work allows little room for homeschooling, so it's usually tackled when Aideen finishes work.
“Last year, when the first lockdown hit, the boys were in sixth class, fourth class, and senior infants and there weren’t Zoom classes at that time. It was really tough to try to keep up with it all,” she says.
There have been some happy memories, however, like her eldest son's confirmation in August and getting to see her mother in her native Limerick after six months apart. For her fellow staff members, getting vaccinated has made a huge difference.
“The vaccine has brought a lot of reassurance and there was a sense of elation when we got it. I was a bit nervous beforehand but my boys were cheering me on and were so happy when I got it. There’s great optimism now.”
As a single mother, Una Murphy Plant felt similar pressure to Aideen when it came to homeschooling. Her workload as a cardiac nurse in the Mater Private Network Cork has also been steadily increasing.
“I’m very happy to have a job but the work never stopped, it was relentless,” she says of the past year. “Now we’re even busier because people have put off going to see their doctors and we’re experiencing the ramifications of that.”
The mother of three barely has time to get in her much-loved daily runs around her town of Kinsale these days, being called into work just last week to deal with an emergency mid-run and having to drive to the hospital in her gym clothes. She says her daughters, Kokie (13), Letti (12), and Rosie (10) are used to her hectic schedule, but never want to hear about Covid again.
“It was tough getting someone to babysit at the start because of the fear. Their dad lives in town and we're great friends, he's a fabulous dad, but he’s a respiratory consultant so he was non-stop as well. I had to work extra hours a lot and it’s difficult for the two small ones,” she says.
“As a working mother it’s just the planning, the dinners, the homework, it’s been difficult. We’re very lucky to have fabulous neighbours. My eldest is phenomenal as well for helping out. They’re sick of hearing about Covid though because when their dad comes over we talk hospital. They all say they’ll never work in one after this.”
Una contracted the virus at the end of December. Luckily, she was the only one in the family and had few symptoms.
“We had to drive back in the dark night after getting tested and for the children, it was just bizarre. They were very frightened because the media is zoning in on intensive care," she says.
Offering reassurance is something those in Una’s line of work do best. She says it was what got her through the toughest days. “You have to turn up. Even when it was really scary. If you’re don't, it’s like the air hostesses hiding on the plane when there’s turbulence. You have to reassure people,” she says.
Apart from receiving her vaccine last month, Una says her standout memory of the pandemic will be the kindness her neighbours showed by dropping items at her doorstep. “There were dinners, bottles of wine, a box of shopping, Toblerones, you name it,” she says. “To me, the frontline workers are the ones in the chemist and the food shops though, who don’t get any recognition.”
As for this Sunday, says she’ll start the day off with a well-deserved swim and run, before spending the day with her daughters, celebrating getting through it all together.
For Una’s colleague Denise Power, the past year has been no more stressful “than any other day in healthcare”. The mother of three, who is working as a nurse in the Mater Private's cardiology department and also undertaking a management course in UCC, says that she and her husband, who is an electrician, have been juggling their schedules over the past year.
“When I came home it was ‘don’t touch mommy she needs to go to the shower’ and there was the fear of that for the kids. I had to rely on my nieces to look after them during lockdown and we had homeschooling on top of it. I do long days so we would have done homeschooling on a Saturday and Sunday. Try explaining that to a seven-year-old.”
Denise has been a nurse since 2004, so putting patients first is “just second nature” to her. “It’s what we do. If we can’t perform during a pandemic when can we? I’ve got my vaccine as well so I feel very protected. I feel like when I go home to my family I’m not a threat anymore. To the public, as healthcare workers, it was almost like we had leprosy in the beginning. Now that we’re vaccinated it’s great.”
Denise says that she’s still surprised how much her children, aged three, four, and seven, have picked up on during the pandemic and is worried about how it will affect them long term.
“My three year old went back to pre-school and she said to me last night ‘does this mean the coronavirus is all gone mummy?'. My seven year old then is asking about vaccinations and antibodies. It’s phenomenal what they pick up. For a little boy of four to be obsessed with handwashing it’s not normal,” she says.
However, there were some happy memories for the Cork family over the past year. “We didn’t do any running or racing. All the football and gymnastics were cancelled and they got a puppy as well."
There’ll be no relaxing for the hard-working nurse this weekend, as she’ll be spending Sunday writing an essay for college. But she is looking forward to the dinner her husband will cook on Sunday.
As the HR manager of University Hospital Waterford and a member of the hospital's crisis management and contract tracing teams, Elaine Anderson has also had little time to catch her breath since last Mother’s Day.
“This has been the most challenging part of my job to date. Both from work and a family life perspective,” the mother of three says. Her husband, who is a porter in the hospital, has also been trying to tough out the work-life balance, on top of homeschooling their sons, who are five, eight, and 10 years old.
“It’s been extremely challenging for both of us. You’re trying to meet the demands of home life versus work life and trying to give both 100%,” Elaine says. Her mother, who is also on the frontline as a nurse in the hospital, has been helping with childcare.
“As a family, we’ve found it very challenging. Myself and my husband were passing ships in the first wave. Him working weekends, me working days, trying to both do our bit but at the same time be at home,” Elaine says. Dealing with the wave of post-Christmas cases was a particularly challenging time.
“There hasn’t been a week that’s gone by that I haven’t worked at least 50-plus hours and that’s come with its own challenges with the kids. They say ‘Mum will you be here in the morning when we get up? Will you be home to give us a kiss goodnight?’ and there were nights and days where that didn’t happen.
“At those times you’re trying to focus on the fact that they’re safe and we need to look after those who aren’t but kids don’t understand that. They want mummy and daddy and that’s all they’re concerned with.”
Elaine has also been vaccinated and is looking forward to the hope it will bring, especially her mother, who lives in a nursing home.
“We’re living our war, as she would say to me. But there’s a glimpse of normality now and I think about how we've learned not to take things for granted. At the end of the day, family is everything.”
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