Quotes About Caregiving

And the capacity to be connected in meaningful and healthy ways is shaped by our earliest relationships. Love, and loving caregiving, is the foundation of our development. What happened to you as an infant has a profound impact on this capacity to love and be loved.

The attentive, loving behaviors grow the neural networks that allow us to feel love, and then act in loving ways toward others. If you are loved, you learn to love. Caring for the infant in this loving way also changes the brain of the caregiving adult. These interactions regulate and reward both child and caregiver.

Being a caregiver for your child is part of the job description of being a mammal.

This is why Alzheimer's is such a terrible disease: the body of the person you love is there, but they've gone - your husband is gone - and they become your child, and you have to look after them as you would a child.

An increasing number of Canadians must juggle the demands of work with the need to care for children, or for family members who are ill or too frail to care for themselves. Our programs have simply not kept pace with these societal changes.

On the days she gets the death calls she grabs at me when I walk past her and I know she wants affection, but I hate always having to be the embodiment of life.

Holding him like that moved me in a way I cannot describe, except to say I felt the seeds of death inside his shrivelling frame, and as I laid him in his chair, adjusting his head on the pillows, I had the coldest realisation that our time was running out.

I told him I would go up there; he said no, no, everything was fine. I drove up anyway and when I opened the door to the house he was sitting alone in the kitchen, the kettle on the stove madly whistling away. He was fast asleep; after the stroke he sometimes nodded off in the middle of things. I woke him, and when he saw me he patted my cheek. 'Good boy,' he muttered. I made him change his clothes and then fixed us a dinner of fried rice from some leftovers.

I can change a No. 1 diaper in 30 seconds and a No. 2 in a minute.

Can I remember exactly when I 'lost' my husband? Was it the moment when I had to start tying his shoelaces for him? Or when we stopped being able to laugh with each other? Looking back, that turning point is impossible to pinpoint. But then, that's the nature of dementia.

When I was in my early twenties, my mom started repeating things, asking the same questions, telling the same stories. It was like, 'Oh, God, this is not right.' When I was 25, my brother and I finally told our dad we had to take her to the doctor.

Two Questions Every Caregiver Needs to Hear: How can I help? Want to talk about it? Ask. Listen. Then listen some more..."- Stress relief author, Susie Mantell

We women know how to take care of everybody so well. But the one person we have written out of the equation is us.

She'd been taking care of others for so long that she scarcely recognized herself when she looked in the mirror.

I'm like a Mr. Mom. I get up and help out, getting the milk together and changing diapers. I've even learned to mix baby formulas and stuff like that.

Even professional, paid carers aren't always models of saintly behaviour - and they know they can knock off at the end of their shift to go home, take an uninterrupted shower, and have a normal conversation with someone.

You don't really know what your children are made of until the mommy engine of the family shuts down, and they are forced to step up and become the care-takers.

Having high quality daycare is by far the most important thing you can do when your kids are little. When I relocated, I spent more time looking for daycare than I did looking for a house.

because my mother has never been out of bed before the

Worry and life have kept her thin- you can stay thin lifting sick and dying people, driving to the hospital, and planning funerals.

While she is still hospitalised, I take Emma out for strengthening walks, for her muscles and been under-used for a long time. She is sometimes breathless, I notice with concern, and there are other changes in her, either through a nerve her therapy touches, or through her illness, or both, which make her, quite often, disagreeable to be with.

Later in life, children are often reluctant for a host of reasons to assume responsibility over their parents, a reversal of roles that symbolizes mortality.

Mi madre se pasó la vida trabajando. Fregaba los suelos de otros, cocinaba para ellos, lavaba sus platos. Lavaba su ropa sucia. Fregaba sus baños después de que los usaran. Se arrodillaba y limpiaba el retrete. Pero cuando estaba vieja y enferma, la olvidaron. La apartaron de su vista. Cuando murió, la arrojaron al fuego.

Caregivers need humor not only for the healing aspect but also to lift our spirits and inspire us to keep doing what we are doing.