How To Cope With Back to School Bugs

Its hard to think of how to cope when your kids have those dreaded new term bugs, especially if you aren't feeling great or if they all get poorly at once. But it always happens after the start of a school year and this has been no different a year so I thought this was worth another share 

Last year despite our Half Term plans for fun and frolics, we've actually had a hellish week of sickness and bugs, its been a trying time especially as I was first to fall ill meaning 3 children aged 6 and under needed entertaining with as little effort as possible whilst I tried to combat tonsilitis and an awful virus. Then came Termite and The Golden Child's turn and knowing how I had felt I was quite prepared with ways to help them keep up thier strength and get better as quickly as possible.

So I wanted to share some tips that have helped us through our week of doom, and I will give big thanks to the mummy massive who supported me with ideas on occupying the kids via Facebook

Entertainment

When Mummy isn't well then things can get boring and soon you have fractious children making much noise and many complaints. So here are some ideas for entertainment.

• Hotter Colder - Hide something and then tell the kids they are wamer or colder depending on how close they are
  
• Pairs and 52 Card Pick Up - Pairs is very simple, use some specific childrens game cards or just a normal deck of playing cards, lay them all flat on the floor and turn them over two at a time to see if you find a pair, when you match a pair keep those cards, the person with the most cards wins. 52 card pick up is when you flick all the cards on the floor and get the kids to pick them up! The child with the most wins!
  
• Simple Arts and Crafts - Papers, crayons, stickers, pritt stick string lolly sticks and sellotape seem to be able to occupy my big two for a good 90 minutes! Throw in the Argos catalogue and some kiddy scissors you have yourself an absolute collage-fest
  
• What Has Gone - Gather together some small items, a tray, a cloth, and a small bag talk about each item as you place them on the tray and then cover with a towel or cloth. Ask the children to look away and count to ten.while you take off the cloth and take one item away and hide it in the bag then see if the kids can say which is missing.
  
• Movies and TV - No I'm Not an advocate of the 'electronic babysitter' but a bit of TV or a movie is an hour or two of down time for you and them and it's a world away from parking them in front of a screen for every waking hour!
  

Health

Disclaimer I am NOT medically trained and you should ALWAYS seek medical advice

• We have used paracetamol and Ibuprofen at the advice of the Doctor to help with the pain of a sore throat and the misery that comes with a temperature
  
• Opening windows is helpful when you have bugs being passed around, its much better to have fresh air coming into the house even if its cooler so that you can help combat others catching  the germs
  
• Staying comfortable in loose natural fibre clothing will ensure you stay cool when tempaeratures spike and you can pile under a blanket if the shivers hit
  

Food and Drink

• Drink Lots of fluids - We rarely have juice here but I will happily let them sip on watered down fruit juice all day if they aren't taking anything else in, plus the vitamin c in fresh orange will help fight the bugs.
  
• Frozen berries are super handy to keep in the house they defrost quickly and are very soft so mixed into a yoghurt can be quite filling and healthy to eat when they won't eat anything else
  
• Ice lollies are soothing and another way to get liquid into them, make your own by freezing fruit smoothies or juice and check out this tip for catching drips...
  

It's just a cake case slid over the lolly stick but it really works

• Soup is another brilliant option and you can make your own in about 30 minutes cramming loads of veg in, blend it for a smooth even easy to swallow consistency
  

Last but not least, snuggles with Mum or Dad (or whoever your little persons grown up happens to be) are always a great source of comfort, so try to ignore the mounting laundry and the teetering pile of dishes a hug will be more beneficial than a show home x

How do you deal with sickness and being stuck indoors?

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When Your Child Is In Hospital

Last Saturday Peanut who never normally gets up in the night, came to our room to say she couldn't sleep. After checking all the usual's... drink, loo, temp etc. I asked if she wanted to just sleep in with us (we were still on holiday and there was a spare bed in our room of the suite) The next morning she woke feeling a bit grumpy and with several very large and some small mosquito bites on her hands and arms. We had a lazy day and she seemed to feel better so we thought no more of it. Sunday evening however, on the flight home she was hot, grumpy and unwell we gave her paracetamol (never travel without) and she slept most of the way home, then because we landed at around midnight  we checked into our hotel to get some rest before the drive back from Manchester and through the night she was burning up so she had more paracetamol. I should add here that since age 1 she has reacted with urticaria  (hives) to Ibuprofen and so we have been told not to use it for her at all.

By morning I knew she wasn't right, she wouldn't eat anything at breakfast not even the freshly prepared waffle with Nutella which is her favourite. I called our GP to say we were heading back from Manchester and could they squeeze us in. I'll be honest with her reaction to the mosquito bites which were swollen and raised I was worried she had an infection in her system. We couldn't be seen until 4pm and when we got to the doctors there was much concern that we had recently travelled, that she had bites and that her heart rate was 162, Her breathing slower than normal with her oxygen levels at 94 and her temperature at 40.9 he sent us straight to our Paediatric Emergency Department.

Normally there'd be a short wait in this department but we were seen within minutes and taken straight to a bed for monitoring,

She did not enjoy the regular BP , Oxygen and Temperature checks

As peanut can't have ibuprofen she was given more paracetamol but her temperature was not coming down. I asked the nurses if we could maybe speak to a doctor about the benefits of ibuprofen outweighing the risk of an allergic reaction but nobody was very keen and so we kept pushing fluids and monitoring her stats. All of her numbers were still not great and then she started vomiting and  I won't lie, I said may prayers and I begged my poor lethargic girl to get better.



She slept a bit and because we have no children's ward any more (ooh that is a whole other rant though)  there is no space for parents to sleep like there would be on a ward. I really didn't care as I had no plans to sleep but  the nurses brought me a cushion and sheet insistent that I  try to make myself comfortable.

My makeshift bed for the night!

They do such a fab job with what they have, considering lots of them came from the now closed children's ward and I know they would prefer to give patients and their families the comfort of a dedicated ward. We are however still very lucky to have the resources we have.

Peanuts little corner of the ward 

We still didn't know quite what was causing the sky high temperature. Thankfully her heart rate came back into normal range and her BP was a nice healthy figure within a few hours but her oxygen remained at 94/95 and her temperature remained high. Finally at midnight we saw another doctor who stated tonsillitis and agreed that as Peanut was in a safe place and had only had  minor previosus reactions to Ibuprofen and  not anyphylactic ones that we really had no other choice but to try Ibuprofen and keep a close eye for a reaction, we would follow that up with antibiotics and see how we improved. Our nightshift Doctor was calm, polite, eager to listen, keen to ensure I understood everything and really very lovely. So she had the ibuprofen and we waited and watched....MAN ALIVE within an hour we were back normal temperature, normal breathing BP and oxygen! She even asked for a Smarties mini egg so I knew we had turned a corner.

After being monitored some more we got home early Tuesday morning and I can't express how relieved and grateful I am for the Doctors and Nurses who kept me calm, kept Peanut safe and fed me tea at regular intervals

I never in a million years thought a simple (or so I thought) thing like Tonsillitis could make someone as sick as my poor girl was, she had me worried sick and even the nurses said she was a concern (that's when you know its time to worry!) The importance and value of our NHS should never ever be underestimated. If  this had happened one day earlier we would have been in a Greek hospital paying for every single bit of our treatment, admittedly we have a cracking insurance policy because my travel training keeps with me the cost of repatriating sick people and I will never travel without a decent policy. But the cost and the horror of being stuck away from home with a sick baby (yes yes I know shes 7!) is not even worth thinking about right now. I'm counting my blessings that she is home and slowly on the mend (and I'm not talking about  how the other two have caught the bug as well!!!!)

Cuddles and blankets for us

I'm counting my blessings that our GP sent us to the hospital and that our NHS is staffed by dedicated and hard working nurses, doctors, health care assistance and everyone else and Im grateful to every single one of you who messaged me to offer, food, cake, childcare, hugs distractions and sympathy. It helped A LOT I'm hoping and praying that Mr Cameron wakes up to the value of the NHS and invests more time and money in a beautiful and life saving resource