I'm a mom who broke quarantine rules and formed an isolation group with my parents because I was desperate for childcare help

• Rachel Heston-Davis is a communications manager living in Illinois with her husband, a software developer, and their son.
• She's been bending the rules of social distancing by letting her 68-year-old parents come over to babysit while she and her husband are both working — and she feels guilty about it.
• Public health officials must acknowledge the reality of working parents and offer safety guidance as well as creative solutions, she writes.
• "In the meantime, parents like me will continue patching together whatever choices feel the least dangerous in the moment," she says.

The neighbor cutting his grass eyes my parents suspiciously as they climb my front steps for the third time this week. I know what he's thinking: "Why aren't they social distancing?"

The CDC defines social distancing as "keeping space between yourself and other people outside of your home." But what if parents must have childcare, for completing work or other reasons?

When total isolation isn't an option, how do families bring in outside help safely?

When my husband and I first faced this question, we could find no resources from any public health official addressing it. So, we tried working and parenting our 18-month-old alone for a week. We pulled 16-hour days, switching off between work and childcare, to each get eight hours a day accomplished.

We almost lost our minds.

Without official guidelines for our scenario, we improvised. We asked my parents to babysit for us three days a week, and both households made a pact to avoid contact with anyone else.

For us, bending the "official" rules of social distancing meant writing new ones. We needed to offset the risks of a larger group by making that group as coronavirus-proof as possible.

One household — mine — orders groceries for both homes through a delivery service, and we disinfect everything the day it arrives. None of us even orders curbside pickup from restaurants. My husband and I no longer walk on our city's crowded bike trails, but stick to neighborhood sidewalks where maintaining distance is easy. When I go to the pharmacy, I only visit the drive-thru.

It doesn't completely assuage my guilt over possibly exposing my 68-year-old parents to our germs. But I don't see another option right now.

It helps that I'm far from the only parent who's bent the rules of social distancing this spring.

Olivia Shultz, an HR director who lives in Virginia and now works from home, lasted about as long as I did before realizing she couldn't handle three kids and work without help. Her family employed a high-school babysitter during core working hours. Their household and the babysitter's family agreed to a shared set of safety rules to keep everyone safe from the virus.

Olivia expresses concern over the lack of guidance for parents on acquiring childcare safely. "If there's guidance [for parents] out there, I haven't seen it. We're all just making it up as we go," she said.

West Virginia business owner Alexis Grant and her husband, parents to two kids under five, also struggled to keep working when isolation started. They too saw no information aimed at parents about safe childcare.

"We've had zero guidance," said Alexis. "I wish [public authorities] would talk about how to safely hire a nanny, babysitter, pair up with another family, or some other creative solution."

Like us, they took matters into their own hands and formed a shared babysitting arrangement with a nearby family. "It wasn't an easy decision to make," Alexis said, because of the public health warnings about intermingling households. But ultimately, "We needed a solution that would work long-term."

Tyler Omoth, a writer living in Florida, found himself in a similar position. He and his wife tried working from home while caring for two-year-old twins. They often ended up working at 9 p.m. after the children went to sleep.

"Neither one of us can keep up, and trying to work at night after chasing toddlers all day is near impossible," he says.

With the twins' daycare closed until further notice, he and his wife finally hired a babysitter five mornings a week, risk or no risk.

I feel fortunate that I, like these families, at least had the resources to find my own solution.

For parents like A. of New Jersey, the lack of public health guidance on childcare means going without help altogether.

A., who asked to remain anonymous for fear of consequences at work, doesn't know her neighbors. All nearby relatives who might babysit are in high-risk health demographics. She and her husband struggle to raise a small son and keep their paychecks.

"The fact is that if we are to keep our jobs, we need enough childcare to get work done, and there are literally no guidelines on how families could do this safely," she says. The stress has become so great that she considers quitting daily. She wonders what will happen if daycares stay closed and employers grow tired of showing leniency to parents.

Ultimately, even those of us who successfully bend the rules pay a price.

Because my isolation unit contains two members over 65, we must take all the precautions of an at-risk demographic, even once restrictions in my state begin to loosen. It's frustrating to think that when our friends begin to come out of isolation, we may not. Plus, we still pay daycare tuition for care my son no longer receives. That's because we love his daycare, and we don't want to lose his spot or make his wonderful caregiver take a financial hit.

In the end, no one has easy answers. I wish public health officials would acknowledge the reality of working parents and offer creative solutions.

In the meantime, parents like me will continue patching together whatever choices feel the least dangerous in the moment.

Rachel Heston-Davis lives in southern Illinois with her husband, son, and cat. A former journalist and English professor, she currently writes for Greenville University. Her freelance work has appeared in Everyday Health Group's "What To Expect," Motherfigure, VacationistUsa.com, and Taavi. Her fiction work has appeared in Barren Magazine.