This month's sickness

And the winner of this month's childhood ailment is : Gastroenteritis!

It has been horrible. At least I'm getting desensitised to paediatric secretions the rate this is going.

Last night was a nightmare.

The 2 girls were already in the throes of another upper respiratory tract infection with the endless sniffles, coughing and sneezing. Annika went from sleeping well through the night to repeatedly waking and crying EVERY night the past week. Terrible.

Then last night, right smack at 11PM Annika started crying. I thought it was her usual crying for no particular reason so I let her fuss for a little while. Chris was on call so Warni stayed over ( thank goodness for that! ). Then she went quiet so I thought she settled. I crept over to her room to check and actually Warni had gone in to rock her back. I think Warni must have tried to put her down because she started crying again. Then I heard the bedroom light come on and knew something was up. She had thrown up.

Ok. So maybe she coughed till she puked? We changed her, changed the sheets and I gave her a dose of cough mixture to try to settle her runny nose. I brought her to my room to put to sleep and she went back to sleep right away. Just as she hit the bed, next thing I knew Madison was up and when I went to check she too had puked. OK... alarm bells going off. Must be a bad cough bug? She got a dose of antihistamines too and some nasal spray. Her sheets were then changed and I got Warni to sleep in her room.

By the time we settled Madison, Annika was up AGAIN and had puked AGAIN! On my bed! OMG! On my new Sheridan sheets/ duvet cover! She was soaked. Again, she had to be soothed, changed and right then Madison started puking again.

By then I had given up hopes of sleeping. I realised it must in fact be a different beast I was dealing with. Weighing up my options, I decided to drive over to the clinic to pick up some anti emetics. Suppositories and injectables.

So then both kids got their suppositories, then puked AGAIN afterward... we were changing linen non stop! The pile of dirty smelly laundry was a small mountain in the balcony. I couldn't decide whether to just give them the injectable. Finally I did. And decided if that didn't work we were going to the emergency department.

After the injection Madison puked once more, but I think that was it. We were sitting in the lounge room floor watching nursery rhymes on the iPad at 2 am.. then the kids basically K.Oed on the floor. We put what remaining clean pillows and blankets out for them and they slept the rest of the night there.

The next day we all just stayed home for the most part. The kids had no appetite and were grumpy but at least the puking stopped and they were drinking.We drove Chris to the airport, and then made a detour to the beach to get some fresh air.

They spent most of the afternoon sleeping. It was amazingly QUIET. By evening things were looking better and they tolerated some soup. Of course at first no one wanted to sleep at night. Eventually they all did though, and it was a sweet relief that everyone slept peacefully till almost 7am!