Happy 3rd Birthday, Jacob

My 30th birthday - tummy bug
1st Christmas - tummy bug
Jacob's 3rd birthday - tummy bug

Poor Jacob.  Today's plans included a trip to the zoo with all the family, but a 24-hour bout of D&V on top of a cough/cold/sinusy thing going on, meant that we had to postpone, and now that postponement looks like becoming a cancellation as the rest of the family can't seem to make it.

He was a little better today, though still quite weak and floppy.  We made the most of the day, playing with a surprisingly-new inflatable pirate play centre (bought second hand but never used), an extremely popular marble run and investigating everything with a magnifying glass.

I can't believe my boy is 3.  I saw this blog post suggesting a list of 20 questions to ask your 3-year-old on your birthday, and every birthday thereafter, recording their answers for posterity.  I thought this was a great idea, and hopefully I'll get round to doing something nice with the answers.  Enjoy :D


1. What is your favourite colour?  Red
2. What is your favourite toy?  Gup B [Octonauts]
3. What is your favourite fruit?  Bananas
4. What is your favourite TV programme? Wiggles programme
5. What is your favourite thing to eat for lunch?  Grapes
6. What is your favourite outfit?  I don't know
7. What is your favourite game?  Hide and seek
8. What is your favourite snack?  Snack bars
9. What is your favourite animal?  Rhino
10. What is your favourite song?  Twinkle twinkle little star
11. What is your favourite book?  Maisy Mouse
12. Who is your best friend?  Mummy and Daddy
13. What is your favourite cereal? Yellow cereal
14. What is your favourite thing to do outside?  Play
15. What is your favourite drink?  Hot nana and chocolate [banana and chocolate flavoured milk]
16. What is your favourite special occasion?  I don’t know
17. What do you like to take to bed with you at night?  Boy buppy and nanny
18. What is your favourite thing to eat for breakfast?  Yellow cereal
19. What do you want for dinner on your birthday?  I don’t know
20. What do you want to be when you grow up? Santa

3 years ago, 8:34pm

How to survive chickenpox with a toddler

Just before the end of term, I changed Jacob's nappy in the morning before taking him to nursery, and noticed he looked a bit sore around his bottom. He often blisters when he has nappy rash, so I thought nothing of it, slapped on some Metanium and deposited him at nursery.

Less than 2 hours later, I was called to pick him up, as he was breaking out in The Pox.

A couple of days later, and my poor boy was covered in them. In his mouth. In his hair. In his ears. On his boy bits. And the poor love was so so grumpy and just didn't know what to do with himself. And I didn't know what to do with him. He wanted to go in the garden but by the time we got to the backdoor, he didn't want to go in the garden. He wanted to watch Peppa Pig, but then again he also didn't want to watch Peppa Pig. He wanted a cuddle, but equally, he didn't want me anywhere near him. But woe betide if I tried to leave the room to get dressed or put a load of washing on.

Mostly, I just felt so so sorry for him. He kept saying "Jacob sad" and grabbing his nappy area and shouting "owwwww!". Poor love.

I managed to persuade him into the garden, and we spent most of the following days covering every inch of the patio in chalk, and then scrubbing it off with a washing up scrubby brush and a bowl of bubbly water. He was in 7th heaven, it was great. Then he went on a tiger hunt and found a tiger hiding in the bushes, introduced himself as "Jacob big boy!" and had fun feeding the tiger stones.

But oh, the itching. He hadn't quite figured out how to scratch, so just kept frantically scrubbing at himself, grabbing his nappy and screaming and rubbingrubbingrubbing his head, and the combination of this and liberal applications of calamine in his hair meant he soon resembled some sort of nutty professor.

We found Calpol, Piriton and aqueous cream with calamine were the most effective. Apparently, calamine lotion gives immediate relief but as it dries, the itching becomes worse - the aqueous cream counteracts this (you can buy aqueous cream with calamine from pharmacies, I found it in the dry skin section and it cost less than a couple of pounds. We went through 2 tubs!).

On one night, the itching was so bad that Jacob didn't go to bed til 5am. He was quite happy, he just couldn't drop off as every time he lay down, he'd start trying to scratch again.

Not sleeping on his blow up bed in the living room.

We googled for help and found oaty baths are recommended, so each day from then on he sat in the bath for 1-2 hours while I gently wiped him with a leg from a pair of tights stuffed with oats.

This was easy enough to make - just cut a leg off, put it over a big cup or something to hold it open, fill with oats, then tie. I made a loop and hung it over the tap so the water ran over it while the bath filled, then kept squeezing it to let more of the oaty goodness out. It felt so silky and lovely, and whilst he didn't like it being near him, if I could get it behind him without him seeing what it was, I could gently wipe him all over with the oats-in-tights and he went into a kind of happy daze.

In the end, it took about 10 days before he suddenly felt loads better, his temperature came down and he was back to his usual energy-filled self.

The spots in his nappy area never scabbed over, but nursery said this often happens and were happy to take him back after a week off as all the other were scabby. Funnily enough, only 2 others at nursery came down with it, both babies who he doesn't socialise with. Then again, he's survived 3 previous CP bouts at nursery without catching it in the past.

I'm so glad it's over now, and hoping the scars will fade in time. Bless him.

Wordless Wednesday

Can we have some time off, please?

Several PJ-days in a row for us all, as we nicely round off last week's bug with a high-fever-inducing-virus, which has struck us all in turn over the last few days. I hate this time of year.

I do wonder how much quicker we'd get better (and, to be fair, how much less ill we'd be in the first place, without nursery-bugs added into the mix) if we didn't have a super-energetic toddler to wrangle, when all we feel like doing is carting our sweaty brows and achingbones back to bed, to wallow in self-pity and sweat for 24 hours. Not that I'd be without him, you understand. It's just that on days when you haven't slept due to bone-shaking chills wracking your body throughout the night, and your muscles are consequently as seized up as though you'd run a marathon, and your head feels like it's been wrapped in clingfilm, and you can't see straight ... on days like these having a toddler burst into tears because you have the audacity to lie down on the sofa, or repeatedly demand "Mummy delp!" when he wants you to help him build a tower, or just pull and tug at every appendage every time you sit down for FIVE SECONDS ........ it can just all be a bit much.

At least, at this age, he is slightly more independent, capable of getting himself snacks if we let him loose in the kitchen. He likes to stand on his little stool and watch me make toast, demanding "Triangle toast Mummy!" while he plays with the salt and pepper shakers, which are people-shaped and 'nest' in a little cuddle. "Tuddle Daddies!" he says, adorably.

He's also pretty good at entertaining himself some of the time, as long as a Finding Nemo DVD isn't too far off, and Tilly is somewhere closeby for tail-grabbing opportunities. This little moon-buggy vehicle has fold-down steps on one side, and he'll happily spend ages walking all his little people up the steps. (No, I don't know what's going on with his face here...)

This is a J-cub patented Look, with a capital L. He cuts his eyes at you from under his fringe, with his lips tight and almost-but-not-quite-smiling. It usually means he's up to some variety of No Good. Here, it's because he knows his Daddy wants to be left alone, but Daddy's legs are crossed in such a way that his foot makes a perfect bouncy-seat, and J-cub wants a ride. And he's getting one, whether his Daddy likes it or not...

...see?

He managed to get a double-bouncy foot ride here (the holy grail), as my legs were similarly crossed, but in mirror fashion, so he could get on both our feet at once, and the bounce was much more secure (am I explaining this at all well? It makes perfect sense here...)

And finally, when all else fails, the arrival of the postman (at 2pm this week - what is the world coming to?) always brings some delight - here an Amazon packet made a perfect hat, and it also was kind enough to be printed with the number 2 on BOTH SIDES, so J-cub could turn it over and over, each time announcing "Doo!" and carefully forcing 2 non-compliant fingers to stand up together to illustrate his point.

Busy weekend ahead - hopefully we can battle through the illness long enough to get through it all. Why can't I be ill on days when I only have work to contend with? I could just leave him in nursery and spend a restful day in bed then...

Day 38 - ??

(Thursday August 26th)

Still poorly, and I had to cancel a playdate, which made me a feel a bit stir-crazy all day (there's nothing like soft-play for getting rid of some toddler energy). Plus I'm not sleeping, and 3 hours of lying awake in bed is not very good for the soul.

Normal service will resume shortly...

Day 37 - ?

(Wednesday August 25th)

I spent more of today being ill, having now most definitely come down with a cold.

I can't think of a single other thing I did (other than baby-wrangling, of course).

Hmmm. Must try harder.

Day 35 - Milk please!

(Monday August 23rd)

Not much happened today, my hayfever tablets stopped working and/or I started to come down with a cold.

In communication news, J-cub used signing for the first time without prompting or seeing something that he knows the sign for. It was a few hours after he'd woken up, when (if I was on the ball) I would normally have started asking him if he was ready for bed. I'd said nothing, and so he let me know it was time by coming over to the sofa, picking up a cushion and placing it on the floor, then sitting on it and signing 'milk'.

We spent the rest of the day mostly covered in chalk.

Day 2 - Better already

As usually happens whenever a school holiday approaches, I started to feel a little under-the-weather on Monday (last day of term) morning. It was Toy Day at school, which means 6.5 hours of screaming and arguing. One child in our class inexplicably brought in some ducklings rather than a toy. They were very lovely and seemed very relieved to go home at the end of the day.

By 3pm I could feel my glands swelling, my throat was dry and scratchy, and my head was muzzy. Thankfully I wasn't working after school, and J-cub fell asleep in the car on the way home. I transferred him (still asleep) into his cot, came down and took some paracetemol, and fell asleep on the lounge floor.

After a looonnnng evening with J-cub (we didn't wake til 6pm so bedtime wasn't on the menu for several more hours), I dosed myself up again and went to sleep for one of those thrashing around, hot then cold, weird dreamy type nights which mean I'm going to wake up feeling like I haven't slept at all. Which is precisely what happened.

I woke with a fever, barely able to swallow, and a pounding headache. This lasted around 12 hours, until evening came and I started to feel normal again.

This morning, I woke up feeling a bit hayfevery, a bit back-achey, and a bit sleepy, which is pretty much par-for-the-course. So my blog-worthy achievement of the day is kicking my bastard Summer Holiday flu on the head in less than 36 hours. Take that, holiday-ruining-illness!

Now I promise* not to moan about illness for the next 7 weeks.

*I retain the right to withdraw this promise.

Happy Father's Day

Whoops - somehow another 2 weeks have sped by since my last post. I'm going to try and do better and post every day for the next week.

Today I just want to say a very Happy Father's Day to Jamie, who is, without doubt, the best father J-cub could ever wish for.

I don't really remember last year's Father's Day, and I hardly recognise this tiny neckless-wonder, who would have been about 3 months old:

A year on, he's all grown up, and just about recovered from a nasty ear infection he had last week which saw his temperature rocket to 40.7 degrees C. Today is the first day he's been back to his normal self (although still refusing to eat), and we've had a lovely day of playing and chatting and cuddling.
More updates soon.

Look Up - Complete

Today is the last day of May, and therefore the last day of my Look Up project. I'm so pleased that I managed to keep going for a whole month, and have blogged every day for the last 31 days.

I haven't yet decided what I'm going to do for the next month - whether I'm going to start another list, or do another project, or what.

We had another horrendous night last night, I was up from 1.50am (which is a perfectly acceptable time to go to bed. It is not anywhere near an acceptable time to be waking up) until 5.45am when Jamie took over. J-cub finally went back to sleep at 6.30am. I was also very ill, with a raging fever, and nausea, and stomach cramps. I have no idea where it's come from, but I've had just about enough of it now.

I've therefore spent most of today sleeping (or groaning), Jamie's spent most of today juggling an overtired baby, a needy wife, and an important OU assignment which he needs to finish and get posted by tomorrow. J-cub's spent most of today in his pajamas, screeching and wreaking havoc and generally being a mischief.

I got two final Look Up photos, which I couldn't choose between. Isn't he adorable?

Exhaustion

After blogging about my reasons for voting yesterday, I went out for a meal with friends before returning to watch the election results. The friends in question have little ones the same age as J-cub, and we usually meet with them in tow, so it was a welcome relief to be able to finish a sentence (and eat a meal) without being distracted or drowned out by screams every few minutes.

Having been put on different antibiotics yesterday morning to try and clear my sinus infection, I spent the day feeling like my body was slowly shutting down. It didn't get really bad until I got home from the meal, when all my skin was raw to the touch, and I was hit by such bad muscular aches and pains that I could barely sit still. As I've previously mentioned, I've struggled to sleep over the last week, not even feeling tired at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. Ideal behaviour for election night, but last night the strongest wave of exhaustion hit me at around 11pm, and I struggled on through the first few results, but fell asleep at midnight and slept a deep, dreamless sleep until 10am when I was woken by waves of nausea rolling over me.

When I got up, the aches and pains still abounded, and I felt heavily sedated, barely able to move or talk or form a thought.

Jamie got all the information leaflets from all my current boxes of drugs, and cross-referenced them to see if there was any reason why I should be feeling as I did. I suddenly remembered the steroid tablets which I'd stopped taking on Wednesday, and started to look up their side effects.

Corticosteroid drugs such as prednisone and prednisolone are commonly used to treat asthma, allergic reactions, rheumatoid arthritis, and IBD. Steroids such as these do have serious drawbacks such as steroid withdrawal symptoms such as: fatigue, weakness, decreased appetite, weight loss, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Speak with your healthcare provider prior to tapering off steroid medications.

I had only been on a 5-day course, but according to everything I found, you should never just stop taking them, even if it's only a short course. The GP had mentioned nothing about tapering them off, nothing about withdrawal symptoms, and the advice on the packet just told me how many tablets to take a day.

Happy that I wasn't about to expire from the combined effects of all my medication, I went back to bed and slept for a further 5 hours. Then came downstairs and carried on sleeping on the sofa.

At around 7pm, the time when J-cub is supposed to go to bed, I started to pick up. J-cub however, started to go down. He's been coughing and crying and generally unhappy since, is adamant that he can't go to sleep, and is now bouncing in his bouncer watching In The Night Garden. At 10.20pm. Doesn't he know that we want to watch Lost?

I promise I'm going to stop talking about my illnesses soon, I'm sure it must be very boring but it's just all-encompassing at the moment. Being ill and trying to be a parent is much harder than being ill ever was, pre-baby. Unless you have a partner around to pick up the slack, you can't just lie in bed and try and get better, you have to struggle on and on, never getting the rest you need and so never getting back to proper healthiness. I'm so thankful that Jamie was off sick today too, with the same sinus infection, otherwise I don't know what I would have done.

It's so hard to have this little shouty face looking up at you, begging you to pick him up six thousand times a day, when you hurt to your very core and can't even bear to roll over in bed because it hurts so much. He seemed to be very aware that I needed to be treated gently today though, and when he came and climbed onto me for a cuddle when I was lying on the sofa, he put each of his hands on each of my shoulders, and gently patted me better.

Self-pity

I'm currently suffering from a sinus infection, which has caused my asthma to go bananas and my airways to shut down with frightening regularity. I went to the GP on Friday, faced with a Bank Holiday weekend ahead of me and several empty inhalers, and following a night of constant struggling for breath and very little sleep.

The lovely GP gave me some new inhalers, some steroid tablets, antibiotics for my sinuses and a nebuliser to help me calm down and get as much of the good stuff into my lungs as possible. Having pumped myself full of drugs on Friday, I had a much better night, managing to sleep from midnight to 4am, and then 6am til 10am (lovely Jamie got up with J-cub, despite him also having the sinus stuff going on). (The reason for me being up at 4am was because I woke coughing, popped a Strepsil in my mouth, and then took a puff of my inhaler. And swallowed the Strepsil whole. Doh! I had to get up to make sure I wasn't going to die and then I couldn't get back to sleep).

Last night, however, was a repeat of Thursday night, with me not managing to stop coughing long enough to fall asleep until well after dawn broke. I was up again at 9am to take all my meds, and then spent several hours back in bed, trying to make up for my post-5am bedtime.

The consequence of all this (apart from getting to indulge in a lot of self-pity) is that we really haven't done anything all day. It's been a day of trying to encourage J-cub to entertain himself, which thankfully he is very adept at.

He's all about the sense of touch at the moment, he loves to follow up his pointing with a careful one-fingered touch of whatever he's looking at, which might extend into a full-palmed touch and even a grab-and-hug-to-his-cheek if the item is particularly lovely. When my mum came to stay last week, she brought a large square of gorgeous red fleece for me to make nappy liners out of. I only needed a small strip off one end for that, so the rest of it was left as a lovely soft floor mat. J-cub loves fleece more than anything - when we put fleece mats on the floor he spends his time alternating between gently touching it, doing downward dog, and having a full face-down rest so as much of his skin as possible is touching the mat.

We arranged the mat on the floor and set up stations of toys around the edge, and he delighted us by crawling around, selecting the toys he wanted, then taking them one by one to the centre of the mat to sit and play with them. Cups featured heavily, as did his 1st birthday balloons which are still going strong.

I took tons of photos, and many fulfil my 'Look Up' brief, so I've stored some away for days when I forget. I love this photo, it captures him perfectly: sitting with his ankles crossed, holding cups, wide-eyed and incredulous.

Bucket-head

Despite all the fun of birthday celebrations, we've had the most awful couple of weeks. J-cub has now been ill with cold/cough type symptoms for over 6 weeks. We've been to the GP 3 times, and made 3 panicky calls to the GP out-of-hours service. They waver between telling us it's a virus (or a series of viruses), that it's a chest infection (and prescribed antibiotics), that he's having an allergic reaction the antibiotics (but continue giving them anyway), and that he's got gastroenteritis and conjunctivitis. Or it's a virus.

We've had days where he's been happy, and playing around like his normal little self, albeit with one eye glued shut with crusty, yellow gunk (yes, I do try to clean it, but it causes him such anguish that I feel like an awful mum for even contemplating it). He had conjunctivitis at birth, and was prescribed drops which I had to carefully squeeze in when he was otherwise occupied with nursing. Now though, a mere year later, apparently they don't like to prescribe anything, because it might be viral.

We've had days where he's coughed all day, and all night, and we've torn our hair out trying to calm him down enough that he'll stop panicking and start breathing normally (Calpol and water, say the doctors. All very well if the suggestion of either didn't cause your baby to go into hysterical back-arching, body-twisting attempts to escape from the syringe/sippy cup).

I've been to work on 4 hours sleep, and have coped admirably all day. I've stayed home from work (which has made me really popular, having only been back for a few weeks) and seethed about the fact that not only am I not getting paid, but I'm also paying for a nursery place which is not being used.

Since the antibiotics started, we've had a rash across his back which came, caused yet another swift burst of panicking, then mysteriously disappeared again. He's had near-constant diarrhoea, which has made me glad that we haven't yet got around to commencing our cloth-nappy adventure (more on that later). The last visit to the GP, a full week after he finished the course of antibiotics, was regarding this diarrhoea. The GP said it can take weeks (weeks!) for the gut to rebalance itself and get back to normal.

Then on Wednesday this week, I came home from work to be greeted by J-cub who giggled and reached his arms out for a welcome home cuddle. Enjoying this lovely "Oh I missed you so much Mummy!" cuddle, Jamie filled me in on the projectile vomiting, diarrhoea, 4 changes of clothes, and lack of anything tangible being eaten all day. Stupidly, I asked "What was the sick like?". J-cub decided to helpfully demonstrate, by shooting the entire contents of his stomach all over me and everything within a 2 foot radius. Lovely.

It's really hard to find the balance between being an over-protective first-time parent, who turns up at A&E in the middle of the night because her baby isn't himself, and being responsible. Before I became pregnant, I hated going to the doctors, I hated hospitals, and I would rather cough my guts up for 6 weeks than admit that I might need a course of antibiotics. I used to panic at the thought of even ringing the doctors for an appointment, sure that they would think I was wasting their time (it doesn't help that when you feel like shit, and ring up for an appointment, they say "Is it an emergency?" If you answer no, which obviously it isn't or you'd be on your way to A&E, then you get booked in to see the doctor in 3 weeks time. When you'll be better. But saying "Yes", well that's just a bit too melodramatic for me.).

Now though, I'm having to get used to going to the doctors (a lot), and ringing the out-of-hours service (because if you ring NHS Direct, you have to go through half an hour's worth of questions, and then they tell you to ring the out-of-hours GP anyway, and you have to say it all again). But I still feel like a fraud, and like I'm wasting everyone's time, and like I should instinctively know when he should be seen and when I should cope on my own. I don't know, though. I'm terrified something will happen to him, that could have been prevented if I'd had him seen. I know I need to get over this, and I know that with time, I'll get used to saying "Give it a rub" rather than "Hop in the car and we'll pop down for an X-ray".

I also think that we're very lucky that in a whole year, this is really the first time that he's been properly poorly for a prolonged period of time. Aside from the bout of gastroenteritis around Christmas, and other mild colds and tummy bugs, he's had a surprisingly healthy year. But all that has done is to lull me into a false sense of security, and is possibly causing me to overreact now. I also need to remember that these are just run-of-the-mill illnesses, not something awful or scary or life-threatening that so many other parents have to go through. And I need to be (and am) thankful for that.

I just wish he would get better. I'm going stir-crazy in the house again: we can't meet up with friends, or go to groups, or go swimming. I think he's as bored as I am, and there has been far, far too much CBeebies on, and getting rid of that addiction is a battle I'm not at all looking forwards to.

The up-side to all this sitting around, is that we've created two awesome new games. One is called bucket-head, and the other is called balloon-face. I haven't captured balloon-face yet with the camera, but it involves holding a balloon up to your face, then lowering it and saying "Boo!" (or, in J-cub's case, lowering it and giggling). Bucket-head is self-explanatory, I think: