bad, bad friday

The first inklings actually happened yesterday, Thursday, when at an unprecedented early hour, and just a scant 45 min after we'd gone to bed, the Baby awoke demanding her first feed at 11.30pm. Simultaneously husband broke out in a fever, I got the dread feeling that I was getting the same ailment as him, and the Child started up her hacking cough from her bedroom across the passage, a cough which was develop fairly rapidly into cries for 'Mummmyyyyyy'.
'Twas then that I knew it would be Bad Friday.

The feeling grew throughout the night as every hour it seemed one of us would wake with some or other complaint, but had I been psychic I would actually have known back on Tuesday evening, when I fell prey to a random 24 hour stomach bug.
Because, of the smorgasbord of ailments currently on offer in our house: sinusitis, chest infection, tonsillitis, bladder infection and radically grumpiness, the one Stella chose to embrace was, of course, the shits.

She rendered a display on our cream bed linen which would've made Jackson Pollack a little envious. She projectile vomitted from her bendy chair on the table onto the black slate floor so that it seemed a flock of seagulls had spent the morning in the kitchen.
By midday I had a full laundry load of soiled clothes and blankets in the washing machine. She's currently asleep under one of her hooded towels, with a stack more of them standing by for whatever the night may hold.

But it was in the afternoon, with a swollen and aching throat, shaky limbs, my ears still ringing from Frieda's piercing screams to 'COME WITH YOU MUMMY', as I sat in the waiting room of the emergency ward with Stella, while she filled my cleavage with yet another load of regurgitated milk, that I really, really knew: Bad, Bad, Baaaaaad Friday.

Stella is fine, I've just got to keep feeding her and cleaning up after her 'til she gets better, Frieda recovered from the trauma of being left behind but still has her cough, husband kept his head down and more importantly, his cool, and got us through supper and bath time relatively incident free, and now it's 8.30 pm and I'm dousing myself with breastfeeding friendly drugs (read: highly unsatisfactory medicine) and going to bed to weep a little into my Orla Kiely's.

The Easter Bunny better have a truckload of chocolate heading our way.