Last week I wrote about 12 things I wanted to do with Molly before she turned 1. Not included in that list, however, was to have the whole family knocked for six by a rather persistent sickness bug. That’s what happened to me, Sam and Molly this week and I can quite easily say that it’s been one of the worst and most difficult weeks we’ve experienced this year.
The whole thing started last Thursday evening when we were up with Molly who spent half of the night vomiting. Poor baby. It was so heartbreaking to watch her go through that. The next couple of days were fine though, she was just a bit more sleepy than usual so we thought that was that. Then we were all hit with it on Sunday. It lasted then until yesterday so it's been a rough few days.
Looking after a baby, or rather, trying to look after a baby while you’re poorly yourself is an arduous task. When that baby is a needy, whingy, poorly baby, it makes things a whole lot harder. Luckily (I think) Sam and I hit our worst points at different times so there was always one of us available to care for her. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. My hat goes off to all those single parents out there. I genuinely have no idea how you manage!
Every time we thought we were all getting better there’d be something else - a new symptom or the revisit of an old one. It didn’t help that I had a few appointments this week too. I had to take the car for its MOT yesterday and I thought we were all over the worst so I decided not to cancel. I loaded Molly into the car and off we went. We hadn’t been in the car 2 minutes when it was filled with the most awful smell and the sound of Molly’s cry. I couldn’t take it anymore. I broke down in tears while I was stuck in the Cambridge morning traffic. This illness has been relentless. It has completely taken it out of me and I’m so glad it’s almost over. Thankfully, after my cry I’d gotten some of my resilience back because after I changed her at the MOT garage she instantly pooped again so I had to drive her home to Sam before taking the car back to the garage.
I think the end is in sight now. I really hope it is anyway. I just want to look forward to and get ready for our first Christmas together instead of spending all of my hours doing endless amounts of extra laundry or in my rubber gloves disinfecting everything that could possibly have been infected with the virus. I may have gone a little overboard but I just don’t want to repeat what we’ve just been through. It does seem like Molly has developed an awful cough now though. It just never ends, does it? How many days until summer?!
