Originally Posted by Former Teacher:
As for mother's sick days: makes me wonder if sometimes she just said the baby was sick just so she can play hooky. Never know 
It's true you never know but I think sick days are very easy to use up, especially if you're a single parent and/or don't have a lot of family nearby.
I only get 5 sick days/year. One week our daughter got sick and my husband and I caught it. That irritated/inflamed his already troublesome appendix enough that he had to have an emergency appendectomy. Between caring for her, caring for him/driving to the hospital and trying to care for myself in between I missed 3 days of work. That was a couple of months ago, which mean I had 2 sick days left to last about 7 months...