Croup, croup and then more croup

I’m on the boat at nearby Longleat stately home and one of the seals has flip-flopped itself onto the deck and is barking at me for the cup of fish I am holding in my hand.

It keeps barking, its tail knocking incessantly on the deck.

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I stumble out of bed to find a croupy William standing at my bedroom door. ‘I’m poorly,’ he tries to say, his voice like a teenage boy who’s hit puberty.

For the next three nights he sleeps in my bed. Over the last four and a half years he has had all manner of illnesses and fevers but any attempts to get him into my bed – where it is easier to look after him – have been met with fierce resistance. Until this bout of croup.

So I don’t have to get out of bed to administer repeat cuddles, medicine, drinks and so on, but a thrashing, feverish four year old does not a good bedfellow make.

However on the fourth morning I know he is better when he declares my bed ‘boring’.

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One of the downsides of Harry being at a school other than our local one is that when one of his brothers is sick I have no-one else to do the school run. So I have had to drag a poorly, feverish William out on an hour long round trip when he would rather be on the sofa watching children’s television. (But then one of the downsides of Harry being at school is that I have to do an hour and twenty minutes in the car every morning to drop two at school when I would rather be on the sofa drinking coffee and watching television. That alone seems reason enough to be homeschooling, to my mind. Not to mention that I could probably cover an entire day’s school work in the two plus hours I am spending in the car everyday.)

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On that fourth evening Harry stumbles out of bed, footsteps across the ceiling, the telltale bark croaking weedily down the stairs. Oh goody! – another three days of looking after a different feverish, poorly son.

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Last night, Ben wakes, struggling to breath. Mama, mama, he whimpers pathetically, his arm flailing through the cot bars searching contact with any part of me for reassurance that he is not dying. Even better! – when the baby is sick I can’t even plonk him in front of a video and leave him to rest. And his IgA deficiency leaves him particularly susceptible to respiratory infections, an added worry.

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And so I sit here, eyes burning with tiredness, cursing the mother who Friday ten days ago at preschool stood next to me (I mean, how brazen!) and said to the teacher, ‘Sam is sounding a bit croupy today, I’ve given him some paracetemol, but he seems fine to be here now. But you know, I will pick him up early I think, because he’s not well.’

Yes, not well. At school, spreading croup. Thank you. Thank you so much.