Sick inside

Well, it seems like I spoke too soon, and the jabs aren't to blame. Grace was very fractious at bedtime last night, but we put that down to the kerfuffle over Olivia's chutney-juggling incident. When I went to bed after posting last night's blog, Grace was already in our bed, not that I'd heard her crying.

At around two-ish, I woke to discover Grace had Technicolor yawned in our bed. There's nothing quite like picking up pieces of half-digested carrot in the small hours. For the second night in a row, we had to strip our bed and attempt to find a clean bottom sheet that fits our non-standard sized bed.

Here we are at nearly 10:30 the next morning, and I'm off work looking after Olivia, while Grandma has a very unwell Grace. Grace has already chundered at Grandma's and she's running a very high temperature.

I'm pretty sure we can rule out Liv's immunisations as the cause of the problem.

And You're Sick To Your Stomach

The other day I happened to see a Tweet from Papa Bradstein. "Anyone who says dawn is beautiful isn't watching it with their baby, who's been up since 3:30." it said. My sympathies, I thought. Thankfully, we've not had any such nocturnal adventures for a while.

D'oh!

Last night, I went to bed just before midnight and was surprised to find K___ still awake and surfing the web on her iPhone. An hour later, we were still both awake. A few minutes after that, Olivia walked in and projectile vomited over herself, K___, our bed and the floor.

Let's rewind a bit.

Yesterday, Olivia went to the doctor to have her three year, four month booster injections. These are the last immunisations she'll require until she's 15, when she'll have the BCG injection, and follow on from earlier injections babies have at two, three and four months. There are two injections given, one in each arm. The first is for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough) and polio (known as the dTaP/IPV or DTaP/IPV vaccine) the second measles, mumps and rubella (MMR).

When I went to pick the girls up from their grandma's house, Liv was hamming up how much pain she was in. Grandma revealed she'd been fine five minutes previously. Nevertheless, she started getting all teary about her injections and the fact that the plasters were coming loose. Grandma gave me a leaflet with the possible side effects from the immunisations on it, and I shoved it into my pocket and forgot about it.

In the aftermath of Liv's Exorcist-impression, I definitely got the long straw, getting to comfort Liv and take her to brush her teeth, while poor K___ was left to strip herself and the bed and attempt to clean up the mess on the carpet. On one of my many trips downstairs to get clean cloths or bowls or chemical products or whathaveyou, I grabbed the leaflet from my study and had a look. Vomiting is listed, but it's not one of the more common reactions for the MMR immunisation. However, for the dTaP/IPV or DTaP/IPV vaccine, vomiting is common, affecting between 1-10% of children.

Eventually, I put myself bed downstairs, while Liv slept in our bed with K___. After all the excitement, I couldn't get to sleep and I distinctly remember 03:00 rolling round.

Today, Liv has been off her food, eating just a few mouthfuls of plain biscuit. She was made sandwiches for tea, but didn't want them in the end. Her main nutrition today has been from 4 cups of milk. After putting the kids down, I went downstairs and started checking my email. I was only at it a few seconds when a huge commotion upstairs pulled me away.

Liv had vomited again, this time all over her bedroom.

I'm off to bed as soon as I've posted this. I hope I get to stay there tonight. I blame Papa Bradstein!

Surface Scratched Where the Needles Play

Olivia has her first round of immunisations. As I am such a total girl F_ took a half day off work to hold her while they did the injections. Seeing as how he has to hold my hand when I have injections I didn't think i was qualified to hold the baby!! So, I turned away while F_ held her for one injection in each of her lovely chubby thighs. She cried momentarily when each needle went in but soon settled down and went for a nap in the buggy.

What I did think was a bit strange was that the nurse made me look at the bottles with her to verify what was being injected and the expiry dates of the vaccines. Was this somehow supposed to admonish them of any responsibility if they happened to acceidentally inject her with out of date cat flu vaccine? There was of course the added dimension that most people wouldn't have a clue what they were talking about anyway. I had read up on the NHS website and knew that what she was having was:

Diptheria, tetanus, pertussis (whooping cough), polio and Hib (DTaP/IPV/Hib)
Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV)

She has to have the former again plus Meningitis C at 3 months.