I had a spectacular
welcome home last night after I got in from work, when Daisy projectile vommed all
over the place within minutes of me walking through the door. Both Daisy and Zachary have been at home
poorly today, so for what it’s worth, here’s my advice for surviving
sickmageddon.
1. Stock up. Not on boring stuff, like milk and nappies. By all means, check you’ve got the essentials
that the kids need, but I’m talking about you. You, the person who’s about to
spend a day dealing with actual live sick and poo from another being. You
need your survival kit. Luckily for me,
my mum’s been staying. Before going
home, she popped out for me. She got me Maltesers,
Haribo and wine. The Haribo and Maltesers
have kept me going today and the wine will soon be poured! It is largely painfully
dull looking after two sick kids by yourself (interspersed with odd moments of
upchuck based high drama), and even worse if you know that you won’t see anyone
at the end of the day. You need to make
sure there’s a reward of some description (whatever your poison may be) for
surviving the day!
2. If you do have to
go out with the kids, be prepared. I
learnt this before I was a parent, when my sister and her twins all had a particularly
vicious sickness bug while her husband was away. She’d been living the nightmare of vomming
and trying to look after the kids at the same time, so I decided to take the twins
out for some fresh air, and to give her a break. They were only about 18 months
old, so I popped them in the double buggy and off we went for a nice bracing
walk. So far, so good. About 15 mins into the walk, one of the twins
vommed everywhere: all down herself and all over the buggy – I’m pretty sure
her twin sister copped some too. It was
at this point that I realised I had nothing with me, except a half full bottle
of water. It is a measure of how much I love my nieces that I did what is
described next: I had to use my bare
hands to scoop fresh, warm sick off the poor child and out of the buggy, then
rinse her, myself and the buggy down with the tiny amount of water I had. Turns
out half a bottle of water is no match for the contents of my niece’s stomach. (NB what made this even more annoying was
that a woman with a baby in a buggy walked past me whilst Operation Clean Up With
No Suitable Equipment was going on…and didn’t stop to offer help! I get that
maybe she didn’t want her baby to go near the sick covered child, but she could
have lobbed a couple of wipes my way!) So, if you have to take them out, take
wipes and plastic bags.
3. Once back at home,
two things are your friend: towels and acceptance. Towels to try and limit the damage from a
completely bewildered and uncoordinated person who is spewing the contents of
their stomach in all directions, and acceptance that some things will inevitably
get showered in the aforementioned sick.
Remember, they’re only things, and baking soda is great at getting the
smell of sick out. Last night, before they went to bed, but after Daisy had
projectile vommed on the sofa (wipe clean), the living room carpet (not wipe
clean) and my mum (sort of wipe clean), I laid towels on the floor by their
bed. It’s a whole lot easier to deal
with sick on a towel than it is to deal with sick on the carpet at two o’ clock
in the morning.
4. Understand that
you are going to spend a lot of time pinned to the sofa, unable to move, and
prepare for this. Zachary has clung to
me all day today, tragically mewling ‘Mummmmmmmy’ if I’ve moved so much as a millimetre
away from him. As a bare minimum you need to have the remote controls, your
phone, a drink and some snacks to hand. Don’t
drink too much though – trying to get up to go to the loo will likely cause
more tragic wailing, and possibly a punch up (even with poorly twins a punch up
is always a possibility), so it’s easier just to minimize the loo visits. The added bonus of this is that it’s valuable
exercise for those poor post pregnancy pelvic floors.
5. Lastly – but most
importantly – under no circumstances should you ever put two children who’ve
been throwing up, or who have diarrhoea, in the same bath at the same
time. Again, I have learnt this through bitter
experience. Nothing finishes a day off
quite so hysterically as a toddler doing a liquid sh*t in a bath she’s sharing
with her brother. It also takes the
shine off having a nice relaxing bath yourself (no matter how much you clean
it), when you lie back and recall that only hours earlier your daughter emptied
her toxic bowels into the vessel you are currently luxuriating in.
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