Rose came with PCA hours. PCA = Personal Care Attendant. The state decided Rose's need levels are high enough to mandate the PCA helping us. In our case, Rose was allocated 21 hours per week.
When Rose first joined our family, we thought we wouldn't need those hours. We'd be super parents. We would handle it all. Whoops. Turns out we do need breaks even if we're even ok parents.
So we went ahead and hired our PCA, who is a 19-year-old college student. We get a few breaks throughout the week to help us better parent Rose in good times and bad. It sounds nice, but like everything, it comes with a few gotchas.
The first gotcha. We have a sort of stranger in our house three evenings a week and one weekend day. After a long day at work, usually starting with a 5 a.m. workout, I need to come home and make small talk with a nice girl who is mostly a stranger. The kicker is, after spending a few hours with Rose, she will try to give us advice on how to parent that I try to smile and nod to without rolling my eyes too noticeably.
The second. Getting organized enough to staff a PCA and meet her needs is actually more work, or it feels that way. Right now, she's asking for more hours next week to buffer the loss of hours since Rose will be out of town over MEA. Adding more stranger time to our lives isn't helping my stress levels. Not to mention, it takes away from a family dynamic, which brings me to the third, and most important nuisance, or gotcha.
The third thing that bothers me about having a PCA is I miss spending time with Rose. I realize it's a blessing to have this much help so I voice these complaints knowing others might love to be in our place. Really, I would, too, if it were a family member. It's not though, and we'll get used to this like everything else in the past 9 months. We'll make it work.
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