Gastro.

Just a heads up; this post may illustrate me as an uptight perfect parent, but I hope not.

For the last 24 hours we have been nursing, rocking, cooing, washing, cleaning vomit with towels, changing sheets, washing our entire sheet collection, feeding electrolyte icypoles to and worrying about our little boten boy, N.

Every 45 minutes from around 11pm last night little boten has been vomiting. He has had a brief break for a couple of hours where he lay lethargic, spent from all of the violent vomiting that he has had to endure over the past few hours - but he has appeared to have started back up again.

All fairly normal, albeit heartbreaking to watch, childhood illnesses, right? Well yes. BUT. They had close contact with another set of children a couple of days ago and the family failed to disclose that the youngest child was struggling with diarrhea and had been previously vomiting. And what do you know..hey, presto - 48 hours later - my baby comes down with it. Now this has pissed me off somewhat. I understand that we don't know when our children are going to get sick and unfortunately only hours before N's sickness started he was sharing a pool and gallivanting around in the sunshine with 3 of his buddies. But I dutifully informed them this morning and apologised in advance if they contract this most awful strain of gastro.

Anyway (get to the point Lex, I hear you saying) - I rang the parent* from where the gastro originated from (actually for another reason initially) and the conversation went icy, then heated and resulted in her hanging up on me (defensive and an overreaction from her - I certainly wasn't raising my voice - but just exhausted etc). So anyway as I sit here I wonder, am I the odd one out in reacting like this? I work full time. My babies get such little precious time with me. I also must devote a great chunk of my weekend to my thesis. Unfortunately due to this weekend of illness, we have had barely any sleep, barely any uni work done, we've had to miss a birthday party and because our baby will still not totally be recovered by tomorrow, we have to tag team the day. J has a presentation at 11 @ uni that he cannot miss and I have to facilitate meetings with consultants and family in the afternoon - at least that doesn't clash so we can tag-team, but I get no sick leave - I have to make that time up! All minor complaints, but something I would not wish upon other people - hence why I keep my children at home, not at care and hopefully away from infecting other people - this was clearly not the case in the above situation.

god, just read this back and it sounds like I'm a whinging 'ol mother. I'm not, I try to be carefree I do, but sickness stuff I just do not budge from my reasonings - if they appear sick to me they stay home from childcare - I do have or make playdates with other children if I believe mine might be infectious.

Am I too uptight? Do I need to loosen up and share the love as well as much bacteria as my children can handle?

*parent is close friend (or was - eek).