Saturday 28 December 2013

The Curious Incident of the Vomit in the Night Time

Now I mentioned in my last post that I was unfortunate enough to catch a stomach bug not once but twice. The viral vector for all this horror? Joseph of course, but it's anyone's guess where he picked it up from. Small children, viruses, it's just how it goes.
Many children get sick, and many manage to do the worst in the middle of the night and sit and scream until a poor sleep starved parent gets up and begins the process of clearing up the gross horror. I've heard stories of small children who've been sick over night and because they're still not properly awake have gone back to sleep amidst their eruptions, bringing a not so nice surprise to the luckless soul whose turn it is to go and wake them in the morning.

Joseph seems not to like either of those options. His logic seems to work in a different way. He knows he's Not Allowed Out Of Bed, a fact he uses to its utmost annoyance and does make me worry if we'll ever get him nappy free over night. He knows he's not supposed to wake us up, which is nice too, but he seems to lack the higher level of reasoning that concludes that perhaps Mummy would prefer to know about things like vomit as soon as they happen rather than several hours later.
He also didn't fancy sleeping in a gross puddle. So what does he do? He turns the splattered pillow over and calmly goes to sleep on the other side. He can't have made much noise at all doing any of this, my husband is a very light sleeper.
I went in to his room that morning and thought to myself - "That's an odd smell. What's that stuck to his bed sheet?" and this lead me to the not so nice surprise lurking under the pillow. I have spoken to a number of parents with little ones and not one of them have had their child do this. Perhaps his logic was more like that of the blokey sort of bloke who turns his pants the other way out to get an extra day of wear and to put off doing the washing.
He got over the bug in record time and by the afternoon was his usual bouncy self. I kept him on dry crackers for most of the day to be on the safe side after making the classic mistake of giving him some Shreddies and a glass of Nesquik for breakfast. Not a nice combination to have to mop up off the floor, believe me.

I, however, did not throw off said bugs so easily and had to spend several days in bed with nothing but glasses of water and dry crackers, feeling utterly miserable. Shortly after that I caught the flu and I still have a cough.

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