When not to share!

As mentioned previously, Mim had thrown up on Sunday morning. She also threw up on Monday afternoon at the hospital playground whilst Caitlin was looking after her. We assumed that it was a combination of a BIG weekend, tiredness, a packet of chips for afternoon tea and possible excessive playing on the playground.

Or maybe it wasn't.

On Tuesday, I took Mim to Kindy, but mentioned to Merryn (the teacher) about the vomiting episodes. Merryn advised that gastro had been going around, with three kids at her Balmoral Kindy struck down with it. She agreed that it sounded more like Mim's exciting weekend was the cause but we agreed that I should take her home just in case. Mim was disappointed, especially as I cancelled her ballet lesson as well, just in case. She showed no symptoms of feeling unwell, although she did say that her tummy hurt a little. I assumed that it was because she hadn't defacated for 48hrs and hadn't drunk a lot of water either, so I made her drink more.

On Wednesday night, Michael made tuna mornay for dinner. Then at 9.30, we heard Mim cough...only it wasn't a cough - it was a barf. She managed to get sheets, pillow, beside table and carpet! There's nothing like trying to hold your breath, comfort an upset little girl, whilst not standing in barf, get her changed into fresh pjs, change the linen on the bed and keep two interested dogs out of the room at the same time. Despite mopping, vacuuming, spraying, incense, keeping windows open - the room still smells like vomit!

Then, at 11.30pm, Caitlin coughed, sorry, barfed! At least she had the skill to get it all into the barf bag. She ended up throwing up eight times that night. I stayed up with her until 3.30am, watching TV. She looked at me sadly, saying "the fish are swimming upstream tonight!"

Michael won't be making tuna mornay again in a hurry.

I took Thu/Fri nights off work, didn't want to carry any gastro bug onto a surgical ward - wouldn't be popular. I came down with the gastro on Friday and felt like crap all that day. Michael waited until Sunday to get his bout. Caitlin threw up again on Saturday night, after eating chicken ("the chicken has flown the coop!"). Luckily this was at the pub, and allowed me to escape under a Willie Nelson night (with willie willie bad music) by bringing her home.

So we've not had a healthy week by any means!