You may have noticed that I don’t really post much by way of personal family-type stuff here. Generally speaking I like this blog to be my creative and fluffy place with no outside influence but this week has been so horrendous for my family and I that I feel I owe you guys an explanation as to why I’ve not been around much.

Last weekend, our daughter Erica was suffering from what I thought was a flare-up of eczema which had spread across her face and hands. She was so uncomfortable by Sunday evening that we called NHS24 who told us to take her to the GP out-of-hours service at the local hospital where she was diagnosed with impetigo. This of course meant that not only could she not go to nursery but she also could not interact with any other children until she was no longer contagious, so all of our playgroups were out the window.

On Tuesday Nairn woke with a slight rash on his chest and I panicked and kept him off nursery. Turns out that was nothing to worry about, but it did mean that I had a rambunctious and bored extra toddler around whilst trying to placate his sick and bored sister and simultaneously make Bob’s birthday food. By the time he got home from work I was barely able to talk but I figured that Wednesday would be better…

On Wednesday Erica fell asleep on the floor and I (stupidly) picked her up and put her into her bed. I stepped very carefully over the gate only to put my foot on a truck left on the floor and subsequently fell over. At 32 weeks pregnant I’m sure you can imagine just how much pain I was in! I have a condition called Symphisis Pubis Dysfunction which basically means my body overproduces a hormone which is intended to making childbirth easier, this means that my pelvis moves about a lot more than it should so I am in almost constant pain right now. Bob came home from work to find me in bed in tears and refusing to move.

Bob works for a government department which has been undergoing significant restructuring over the last few years and as a result his job role has been continually re-advertised internally whilst job cuts were happening. This has meant four job moves in two years. The job he has been doing for the last six months was yet another job advertised internally as a result of these job cuts and on Thursday he was told his application had been unsuccessful. As this situation is ongoing I really can’t talk about why this is such an outrageous turn of events but suffice to say that several factors that his work are aware of were not taken into consideration.

And that brings us to today. This morning I called NHS24 again as Erica’s hands have been very sore and not anywhere close to healing, the nurse told me that it sounded like she has hand, foot and mouth disease which was when I remembered getting a letter on Monday telling me it was doing the rounds in nursery. The nurse advised us to see our pharmacist and then the GP if hand, foot and mouth was confirmed. I would have done this if my electricity hadn’t gone out at 11am meaning that I couldn’t go for a shower! Helpfully the response unit dealing with our suppliers phonecalls told me that we had no electricity because our substation was on fire. Our substation is in our back garden and pretty clearly was not on fire. Eventually at 6.30pm this evening power was restored.

So, all in all probably one of the worst weeks we’ve had to endure. Our eldest, Findlay, is the only one to have had a reasonably good week and has been packed off for the weekend to make sure he doesn’t catch the babies’ bugs.

Of course this has had an impact on the time for tea swap since not only have I been unable to get the very lovely Sue‘s swap package sent off but I haven’t been able to do a post about all the wonderful things I’ve seen swapped. I promise that as soon as things calm down here that will be my first priority!

Phew! I apologise for the essay but you know what? Maybe BT had a point – it’s good to talk

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