We have had a couple of rough days. Arthur's cold that he caught at the midwife appointment last week has wiped the floor with us, seriously! He had a nasty cold, and I thought, "Poor Arthur, he DOES get things badly..." but now that all 5 of us have been/are still wading through it, I see that Arthur actually had it sort of moderately really, not terribly! Neil got it by Sunday and had to take Monday and Tuesday off work. He has the most awful chesty cough right now that is triggering his never-really-there asthma - I've never heard his chest sound like this, so I hope it will hurry up and clear up, and not be something he has to go to the doctor for. Nathan had an evening of pitiful screeching every 20 minutes or so on Sunday, and we felt sure he must have a sore throat. Sure enough, he was really poorly the next day and is still producing unforseen quantities of snot today even. Monday I came down with it, and until that point I had (shamefully) been somewhat implying that Neil was dealing with a case of "man flu", such were his complaints about what seemed a simple cold (not a nice cold, but still "just a cold")! Then I discovered exactly what he was complaining about, ugggghhhh. It really is just a cold, but I can't believe how awful it has been, for "just a cold"! At least nobody has been feverish, thankfully! But yuck. No little person could sleep well at all until the achy nastiness started to ease after the first 2 days. Neil and I have had our worst trouble with sinus pain (the kiddies didn't seem to have this trouble, but I've read that little ones don't, since their sinuses aren't developed like adult ones are). I haven't ached so much since I last had real flu.
I also have this REALLY annoying thing where sore throats affect my sleep big time. I have no idea why I must react so over-sensitively to sore throats! I never used to! Tsk. So, a sore throat means I can't sleep. It just keeps me awake. This time the sore throat wasn't severe enough to do that, thankfully! But then, every single time I have a sore throat like before a cold kicks in, it eventually turns into a gritty scratchy throat as it heals. And for some reason this makes me gag and my eyes water and it's absolutely unbearable EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. I swallow. It's more bearable during the day because I guess I am eating and drinking and talking and moving about and upright and so on. Upright has a big part to play in how manageable it is - the SECOND I get horizontal it's impossible to cope with, I swallow and swallow to keep from gagging but it gets the better of me in about 4 swallows, by which time my eyes are running from the gritty gaggy thing, ugh. I haaaaaate it, and can't figure out why it affects me so, since it never did before my teens.
So, the scratchy "healing" part of the sore throat always (always) lasts about 36 hours for me. If I'm unlucky, that will cover 2 nights and the day in between, not 1 night sandwiched between 2 days. This time it started at bedtime last night, so I had not one wink of sleep last night, and was constantly rushing down to the kitchen with watering mouth and eyes, to boil a kettle and gulp down water as HOT as my throat would bear it until the gaggy scratchiness eased off. So not fun. Hot water is the only thing I have found to ease the gagginess instantly (well, by the end of about a cupful anyway). Then I have 5-10 minutes to fall asleep before it wears off and I need more hot water! I did not manage to fall asleep that fast any of the times I tried it last night, so I got no sleep. Nathan had a better night though, because I was awake next to him anyway, and thus was able to attend to him the INSTANT he stirred, so that he didn't wake right up and get upset and start coughing. He needed settling in that way maybe 5 or 6 times last night, and woke up really upset at 5am even with me trying to settle him before he woke up fully. He's too congested to breastfeed which is such a shame for the poor little man!
Matthew finally succumbed to the cold yesterday - he played with the same toys as Arthur on Wednesday and has been totally exposed all this time, but he has always had a stronger immune system than Arthur and Nathan (his licking the floor thing as a baby, perhaps?! Or just made more like I was as a child (didn't catch things easily, got them mildly), rather than Neil (caught everything, and badly)?). Anyway. He's streaming and definitely not well, and fell asleep as his lunch was put in front of him yesterday afternoon, bless him! But otherwise trucking on much better than Arthur (or the rest of us!) did. He's also being quite a man about it and refusing to acknowledge that he's ill at all, hehe! If I ask him, "Matthew, are you poorly today?" He will say cheerfully, "Dope!" (nose full of goop!), or if I ask him, "Have you got the cold as well, Matthew?" then he answers, "Um... doh! (no)" whilst wiping his nose on his sleeve, haha! He won't admit to having a cold at all!
Arthur and Nathan have been waking and coughing a lot the past two nights, but Arthur has only stirred briefly once so far and coughed a little, so I'm reeeeally hoping he's almost better, and that the rest of us will follow suit quickly! Neil came home after lunch today and worked from home this evening (bless my lovely husband!) because I had had no sleep the night before and was not well at all still. I have no idea how I got through the morning and lunchtime with the boys, but somehow I did. They were not too well behaved at all though, especially Arthur. We haven't done any reading lessons while we've been poorly, but we'll get back to them as soon as I feel up to it (hopefully tomorrow if I get any sleep tonight!). I was supposed to sleep this afternoon once Neil was home, but my throat was too gaggy once I lay down and tried to sleep. It's still scratching and gritty and horrible right now at nearly 2am, and tonight I decided I was not going to lie in bed and gag and let my eyes water and feel dreadful in the dark and keep on running to boil a kettle. That sucked last night, so tonight, though I am dizzy with exhaustion, while my throat is scratching I am sitting up downstairs (upright helps, though I have never been able to sleep upright, unfortunately!) and reading books that I have wanted to read for ages (I read the whole of Supernatural Childbirth, Meg! Will comment on it at my pregnancy diary next time I update!) and updating here. I haven't been online for a couple of days so I had a bunch of blogs to catch up on reading! I would SO MUCH RATHER be asleep! But oh well. I pray God blesses me with supernatural energy tomorrow! ;) I will need it. We had two viewings for tomorrow but we cancelled them because the house is, well, a house that was not in any sort of clean order to start with, but which has since had 2 adults and 3 very small children with a virus ailing in it, and no tidying, cleaning or anything in that time! I haven't got the energy to do a thing about it for tomorrow, so it had to be cancelled.
We did get a good offer made on our house and we accepted it, but now we are not sure what to expect, because the guy who made the offer is still viewing other properties and has also put an offer on another place! He hasn't retracted his offer on our house, but he has put a new one on another house, so I am less inclined to trust his offer really. We'll just see how we go. We are not stressed about who, when, where, and why, etc, because we know God is in control and his timing is best. I'm beginning to want to stay here for the next few months at least, because I'm only 11 weeks away from my due date (can you believe it?!) so I'm starting to want to nest down and get ready to give birth and have a newborn, etc. I don't really want to be moving house for a while now! We'll probably take the house off the market by June if we haven't sold by then, to have our baby boy and get resettled after his arrival, and then we'll put it back on again. We're not anxious about it at all. God is handling it :)
My digital SLR camera arrived, and I'm SCARED of it, haha! Seriously! I don't know how to TOUCH it, let alone use it! ;) The manual is like War and Peace, and so far I have read 7 pages on how to charge the battery, so I'm nearly ready to do that part of "photography", haha! ;) I have no idea how to even turn the thing on, let alone take a basic photo, and I don't know how to find the time to figure it out! I have been back to the old broken camera and taken a couple of pictures, and just tried to make sure I upload them the INSTANT I take them, without turning the camera off in between so that they don't get mysteriously deleted. The boys have free rein with that camera now - it's theirs! Matthew and Arthur like taking photos with it a lot, and videos (Matthew is improving at pointing the camera at the thing he wants to actually photograph!), and Nathan loves to hold it and press the buttons. He has taken quite a lot of photos with it, but really just of his feet and stuff - he's only 15 months old! ;) It gets drooled on a lot more than it ever used to, but oh well. It's theirs to use, though I won't let them bash it about or anything. It's sure to snuff it pretty soon, but they're having fun with it for now! I just need to learn how to use my new camera with its ENORMOUS lenses and scary million buttons and labels and dials! I took one look at it when I got it out of the box and knew I could not possibly use such a camera without learning to use it properly and justify its purchase! It's a professional camera, and so I need to learn how to take professional (ish!) photographs. I soooo want to, and I'm excited about it, but the gap between here and there is too far to see across right now, and I'm nervous!
Okay, I think I will have a hot drink and try going to bed. I'm too tired to stay up, and I suppose if I really can't sleep I can always get back up and read. Arthur's up coughing at the moment, but he sounds "drier" than he has, so that's good. Little Nathan has been so congested that I put a pillow into his cot for the first time. Just over two nights he has really taken to his pillow and he looks so much like a BIG BOY in his cot now :( It makes me feel such a pang of something, and just wistful, when I look at him. He always lay on his tummy with no pillow as a baby, just sheets or blankets on him, and following the "feet to foot" rule, low down in the cot. Now, almost overnight, he is sleeping with his head on a pillow which is up at the TOP of his cot like a real bed, either sprawled on his back or on his side. He seems to have outgrown his covers at the same time - they don't cover him up enough, or else they quickly get thrown off when he moves about (this boy is a MOVER in his sleep!). So I have had to get out the bigger cot bedding and the cot duvet! He looks so grown up, and I feel sort of sad about it! :( He is breathing lots better with his head on the pillow though, and when I put him down for his nap lower down than the pillow, he sort of wiggled his way up the cot, raised himself up onto all fours for a moment and then flumped his face down onto the pillow, surfacing to snuggle into that spot with a big smile :) He seems to love cosying down into softness, and thus really enjoys his new pillow. My big boy. Waaah! :(
The boys' new bunk bed is arriving the day after tomorrow!!!! I'm excited! When they're set up, they can move right in if they want to, but I am not sure if Matthew will want to give up his toddler bed yet. He has been in that (or the conversion to a cotbed) since the night he was born! I can't imagine him just hopping out of it and into the bunk bed merrily one night. He's still so tiny and that bed suits him so well. BUT at the same time, we're hoping to move Nathan into it within the next couple of months, even if we have to convert it back to a cotbed for a while. I hope that won't be a problem for either Matthew or Nathan.... Baby boy #4 will need Nathan's cot! But if we had to, he could sleep in the Moses basket for a while, or right in bed with me, to give Nathan more time. I don't know. Anyway, that's the plan! I hope it goes okay!
My head is stuffed right up and I can't breathe, and the worst thing is not being able to take decongestants and such because I'm pregnant. I can take paracetamol (which, let me tell you, is not touching the sinus pain!) for aches and pains and I have been, but nada for the congestion. I can't hear properly and I really don't like the "I can't breathe!" thing when it's accompanied by the "I can't breathe!" thing of the 3rd trimester of pregnancy! It makes me feel sort of panicky and claustrophobic. BUT, I can sleep with congestion, pretty much. Just not the throat. By morning it should be all better, so at least tomorrow night I should be able to fall over and sleep like a log till I have to get up! I will try going to bed now and hope I can sleep for a bit. I must update with more photos soon - I have such a backlog! I have a few emails that I'm behind on, which I will get to as well - I just haven't been online for a couple of days and I promise I'm not ignoring you if you were wondering! :)
5 comments:
Hopefully this cold will get better very soon for all of you!
I am a teacher (exposed to kid's colds all the time) and I know very good what you are talking about when you describe the pain upon swallowing - I get it quite often too.
Something that works for me and is suitable even for a pregnant mom is to make a hot compress to your throat - you need a piece of cottonwool (long and narrow enough to be wrapped around your throat), a piece of clear plastic foil in the same lenght and a winter scarf. You put the cottonwool on the foil piece, dab it with warm (almost hot) water and wrap both around your throat. You put the scarf around it too and sleep so in the night. It soothes a lot and usually it takes only one night to clear the pain. When you are not pregnant you can put a bit of alcohol (spiritus vini) mixed with the warm water - this way it is even more efficient.
And for the sinus pain and congestion - have you tried inhalation? Just put a pinch of baking soda in a bowl of very hot mint tea and inhale the steam form a close distance. You can put a big towel over your head so the steam cannot escape so easily. It does no harm and it soothes.
These are tried and true home remedies from my country - no reason they won't work in UK too, if you decide to give them a try :)
One thing I've found that help with tickly throat is sucking lozenges v slowly - the slightly syruppy texture soothes it. I have even gone to sleep with Strepsil tuicked away in lower cheek (when lying on side), though probably not a great idea really.
Oh how miserable, Alice. I hope you all are feeling better very soon.
Oh heck Alice, what a rough time you're having! For what it's worth I did kinda agree with the "building up their immunity" comment, but I know it just doesn't always feel like the right thing when you've got poorly little tots. Fingers crossed the worst has passed for you all.
Am so excited about your new camera!! My husband bought me a DSLR in December and I adore it! It is hard work finding your way round the settings though and totally different to a pocket point-and-shoot camera, worth it when you get the hang of it, bet you'll get some fab newborn pics :)
Thanks so much for your encouragement! I just love you!
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