A mother's work is never done

I hate feeling like I have nothing new or interesting to say, but I'm afraid that's the state of my life at present. I feel sick all the time - whether or not I eat. Practically the only time I don't feel ill is when I'm sleeping. I also feel tired all the time.

And yet life carries on regardless.

Take today, for example. In the space of about 15 minutes I found out that the Bio paper the kids write tomorrow was missing (we found it in the end), and that Nellie was not only running a temperature, but hadn't eaten all day, and was complaining of ear ache. So - Mommy to the rescue! In between trying to drop off patterns with my CMT, dealing with telephonic queries about the nappies (I'm starting to get lots of calls - which is great), keep the dogs from freaking out (they still panic when we leave without them - I eventually resorted to putting them in the car and taking them with me), and collecting Nellie from nursery, my nausea and tiredness don't really have time to feature. I'm not sure whether to be grateful for that or not.

Then, sitting in the doctor's waiting room, Nellie promptly threw up all over me (got very little on herself and just about all of it on me). So rather than sit in an icky shirt, I went into the bathroom and washed it. I figured that sitting in a cold, wet shirt was better than sitting in a warm, wet, smelly and sticky one. Plus, I'm not sure that the smell wouldn't have triggered my own bout of vomiting, and dealing with one person throwing up is bad enough - two in one family is more than I can deal with right now.

Then, home again (jiggedy-jig) to discover that Graeme's brother is ill, and so would rather go for supper at his mother's house than come to us (we were all getting together for supper to say farewell to the other brother who's jetting off East for a few weeks of holiday). Rather than stay and help me, my husband went off to join them... leaving me to clean up the dog's diarrhoea and my daughter's poo in her pants (not that he was aware of this when he left, give him his dues).

So let's just see... to sum up, today I have been vomited on, cleaned up poo pants, and had to clean up diarrhoea, all while trying hard to keep my own bile down and being so tired I feel I could sleep a week, and all on my own. Oh yes, it's definitely been a 'mommy' day.

Which leaves me with only one question (and it's not the one you're thinking... I know why I want another one!) ... how the hell do single parents do this day in and day out????

Nice clean shirts

Yesterday Nellie didn't eat particularly well, and the night before she had a really disturbed night. So last night we doped her up on baby Nurofen to get her to sleep properly in the hopes that she was just feeling a bit unwell and maybe in a bit of pain from her teeth.

She slept through (more or less), which was great, and after her early morning bottle (around 5am) went straight back to sleep instead of playing for a while. That should have been a warning bell to us.... Anyway, when she then woke up again around 6.30am, she was very floppy and a bit unresponsive, as well as being slightly hot. We didn't think too much of it, till about 7am, when, without warning, she promptly threw up all over Graeme and herself.

While Graeme changed shirt, I cleaned her up. I then handed her back to him while I finished off something else, thinking that as she'd thrown up they'd both be fine. Not so. She promptly threw up again, on his second nice clean shirt! Poor chap!

She's fine now (more or less - she's has a slight temperature today and has been feeling very sorry for herself), and fortunately the unresponsiveness disappeared (or I would have taken her to A&E), but I decided to stay at home with her. I'm really glad I did, because I know that if I were feeling as miserable as she clearly has been, I'd want my mommy and the way she's clung on to me today and just wanted to cuddle continuously has just confirmed for me that I made the right decision.

Anyway, now to try to get her to sleep a bit more....