A plague on all our houses

It’s probably wrong to use the word plague in light of recent years but it feels like we’ve been visited by one in the last few days. Just as the weather turned noticeably cooler as the glorious Indian summer ended, sickness smacked us in the face.

Admittedly it was initially stealthy in its approach. Creeping up over a weekend when we had friends staying. Their child was, seemingly out of nowhere, sick on the first night and then, one by one the assembled group started dropping like flies. By Monday, I had one sick child who listlessly trailed around after me at our local shopping centre and could even raise a smile even when I offered to buy her new shoes. By night time she crawled, crying, into my bed only to snore loudly through a heavily blocked nose. That same night the other one went down too, crying and shouting as they struggled to sleep. I had to prop them up in bed so they could breathe more easily and so fall asleep before laying them down again.

The next night was even worse as my husband succumbed to the bug too and shivered away in bed unable to help. It was a brutal reminder of how wretched a lack of sleep can be as both kids seemed to take it in turns to wake each other up as they screamed and cried. At points, when the howling seemed to reach fever pitch, it conjured images in my mind of desperate prisoners baying to be let out of their cells. It all felt so f**king desperate. And, as the grey morning light started to creep around the edges of the bedroom curtain, my desperation turned to rage. I need my fucking sleep! How could they not understand?! Mad thoughts as they were of course only tiny. I thought, not for the first time, that I wasn’t cut out for parenting. That this was finally a step too far and that couldn’t go on. And yet, you have to.

I wondered if I could hand off my eldest to my husband to try and get some extra sleep with the littlest. This turned out not to work – surprise surprise! I found myself, instead, in bed with everyone, dolling out syringes of Calpol. What followed was maybe ten minutes of fragile peace as it looked like the little people might sleep until they decided, categorically, that they would not be doing that. My fraying nerves couldn’t take it any longer and I had to get up and walk out of the room, leaving my husband to deal with the chaos as I sat downstairs for a few minutes collecting myself.

How on earth do people get up and go to work after a night like this? The answer is, again, they just do. How do people not make terrible mistakes when they are so tired that they’re not even sure they’re awake? I thought of the millions of parents around the country as bleary-eyed as us this morning and how they were all trying to start their days, which gave me some comfort. But I also thought about the fact that we were only in autumn and a long winter lay ahead. How would we cope with the inevitable repetition of this situation?

After a few minutes to myself, I felt slightly calmer, despite my thoughts swirling around. We all shuffled downstairs and sat in the kitchen as my husband began the ritual of making coffee, the only thing that could save a morning such as this. Ten minutes later, with a half drunk coffee in hand, things seemed brighter. The day suddenly was not a total right-off. 

The plague had struck, and yet we’d survived it. A feat if nothing else.