The poor wee thing, gastroenteritis. It's been very grim, to be honest… although Babybear's been relatively chipper in between mammoth bouts of diaorrhea and vomiting, which is a good sign. I have been far from chipper, however – I've been the one miserably scrubbing and cleaning doing copious laundry and disinfecting, all to no avail. It started a week ago yesterday and according to the doctors might continue for a while longer as even if she's over the virus her gut is now completely traumatised and will take a few days extra to start absorbing things properly again.
The funny thing is that she seems more reluctant to take her formula milk than she is the very bland food we've been offering her, which isn't the way I thought things would go. Perhaps breastmilk would have been more appealing under the circumstances? (Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ad infinitum). I have sometimes been giving her half measures of powder to liquid to lessen the strength of the milk but keep her liquids up, as clearly that's the most important thing.
You'll all be surprised to hear that I haven't gone short of unwanted parenting advice, though, so that's been fun to deal with on top of everything else. If one more sodding person gravely tells me that 'you have to make sure she doesn't get dehydrated' while offering me no practical insight into how the hell I get more liquid into an unco-operative child without resorting to a canula and an IV bag (my paramedic brother's helpful suggestion) I will fling thirty newly yellow-stained babygros into their faces and dance off into the moonlight.
Babybear has dined on chicken risotto, plain pasta, roast chicken, peas, green beans, bread and butter and pears for the most part this week as I have been trying to keep things as bland as possible (better for the baby, yes, but also infinitely preferable when there's a good chance you'll be washing it out of your ponytail at two o'clock in the morning). I have been very surprised at how much she has eaten. Nothing like her usual intake, naturally, but about half as much, which I wouldn't have anticipated.
So do you want to hear my top tip, courtesy of my mum? Immediately I told the old dear about the vomming etc she said to get an old towel or two over the cot sheet, so that when (inevitably) they puke in the middle of the night you don't have to fanny around with changing the bedding. It works… you just take off the towel, checking for damp patches on the next layer down, and then quickly hose the contents off in the bath. Once the baby is sorted she can go back into bed immediately (after a wee drink of water and brief toothbrushing session) and so can you, knowing that at least you won't have to face the horror of dried-in sick first thing the next morning. That's when she doesn't refuse point blank to go back into her cot, of course, because she'd rather jump about on your head for the next two hours…
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