Do you remember I wrote something sniffy and moralistic about 'no more narcissitic posts' from now on? Well, guess what! It was a big, fat lie! Heck, sometimes you just have to beat that drum, yank that chain, smack that pony. So here it comes, my big whinge, and it's all me, me, me, me, me ME! Me and my morning sickness.

Firstly - let's get rid of the 'morning', bit, once and for all shall we? (I won't even bother responding to the people out there who think it's all in the mind.) Morning, afternoon, evening - any time is fair game. I've even been known - frequently, in fact - to wake up in the middle of the night, throw up, then go back to sleep.

What makes me sick? In short, everything. Just waking up. Cooking smells. 'Over-exertion.' By which I mean going to the laundry room and back, taking the rubbish out, sometimes just too much wandering from room to room. Things that are now out of the question: domestic chores, going to the shops, looking after my children, any kind of food preparation (I have to hold my breath as I open the fridge door). In short, normal functioning is suspended.

Eating ceased to be a pleasure some time ago. Now it's a case of "must fill stomach now." In fact, the thought that has consumed each waking moment for the past 4 weeks is 'what shall I do to get some relief'? Birthdays have come and gone. My friends have had babies, got married, moved house. People I love have sent concerned emails. I've ignored them all. The present, the nausea, is everything.

What do I eat? A short list. White bread. Honey. Ham. Gherkins. Rice, sometimes, as long as it's drowned in soy sauce. Occasionally with peas, but again, heavy camouflage. I'm sick of all of it. What do I drink? Coke. I hate it, but the bubbles and the sweetness calm the stomach, at least for a bit. I can't drink water: I taste the motes of dust, the washing up liquid or the chemicals in the plastic. It's unspeakably foul, though just about OK if I add some apple juice.

With all that coke sugar, it's important to brush my teeth, right? Yes, only it makes me vomit, pretty much instantly. All that jabbing around in the mouth - it's like sticking my fingers down my throat. Once I've thrown up, I haven't got the energy to do them again. So my poor teeth have a nightly coating of stomach acid. I can almost feel them rotting in my head.

Let's not forget the tiredness. The tiredness. Some days I don't know which is worse, the overwhelming nausea or the crushing, draining, emptying exhaustion that accompanies it. I've spent hours and hours in bed sleeping, but it's never enough.

How many times a day am I sick? Well, on a good day, twice. 2 is the minimum. On a good day - like today - I can pootle about on the computer, have a shower, make a few phone calls, that sort of thing. I must be careful not to overdo it. On a bad day - yesterday - I have a good morning, decide to do the recycling, then retire to bed, vomiting almost non stop in the afternoon. How many times? I lost count.

This has been my life for 4 weeks, and I've had enough. The Switzergent has surpassed himself, looking after the girls, cooking and clearing up, bringing me a stale roll to gnaw on in bed. He hasn't complained. Our friends, my ma, the Red Cross ladies have mucked in and I feel amazingly well-supported, as well as hugely grateful. But enough is enough: I want to be back to normal.

Another Glory-related hospital drama

She'd had a fever for a couple of days and was very pale. Not that I'd paid much attention: I was too busy staring into my green plastic sick bucket. The Switzergent showed his usual over-concern ("is it a brain tumour?"), which I countered with my usual understatement ("it's probably nothing!"). I agreed to at least take her to the doctor.

11.15 appointment. I staggered down the hill to the surgery, dizzy and nauseous, running late, with my ashen-faced little girl in the pushchair, clutching an empty plastic bag. I got to the surgery door and was immediately sick. The receptionist led me into a room, gave me some water and relieved me of my no-longer empty bag. Gloria stared vacantly.

The doc examined her. At the time her fever wasn't too high, but she looked terrible: dark-eyed and still extremely pale. She did a blood test. "She has a very high white cell count," she told me. "I'd like her to have further investigations in hospital." Oh. I had left Emma with the maman du jour, and only left the house with my health insurance card. No phone, nappies, wallet, nothing. "Never mind about all that," said the doc. "Just get there first. I'm sending someone with you as you're in no fit state."


We walked to the hospital - 500 metres away - at a snail's pace. Anything faster would have made me sick. Very efficiently they whisked us into a consulting room. All of a sudden, Glory went from being "unwell" to an obviously very sick baby - 40 degree temp, colourless, blue-lips, arched-back and crying a terrible, heart and gut wrenching cry. This was not good. They took more blood. They put a venflon in her hand. They gave her suppositories to bring her temperature down. None of which she liked at all.






"We think it might be a urine infection," said the blonde, impossibly-young looking doctoresse. "We need a sample." We were transferred to a bay. Glory lay in her steel-barred institutional cot breathing rapidly and looking grey. We waited. No pee. An hour passed, then 2. No pee. 5 hours passed. She was put on a drip. She peed. "Definitely an infection," said the doc. "Only we need an uncontaminated sample for culture. We have to put a catheter in." Poor Glory. I couldn't watch.


I spent the next 24 hours in a bed next to my little girl, watching her floppy body and listen to her plaintive wails. Sometimes her skin was so hot the room would heat up, her breathing like machine-gun fire. She didn't want to be held, except on the occasions she fell asleep in my arms, exhausted. And there was the matter of her smell. Normally she smells of caramel custard - it's my favourite smell in the whole world. Now she smelt of yeast; sour and anaerobic.


There was an upside to this. I got to lie in bed next to her all day - I didn't want to leave her side anyway - and do nothing, while kind nurses brought me bread rolls and patted me on the shoulder when I was sick. Nausea cures are overrated: but someone to pat your shoulder, silently understanding your moment of misery. I was grateful for that.

A bad night. Then the 2nd dose of antibiotics. Then...an improvement. She woke up a bit and flirted with Antonio, one of the nurses. This was the Glorymouse of old, and it made my heart sing. Then the urine results came back. "E. Coli," said the doc. Now it was just a matter of waiting for the antibiotics to work. "And she needs to drink." She hadn't eaten or drank for two days, so was receiving IV fluids as well. We all took turns - Emma included - offering bottles of milk and apple juice, pleading, cajoling, in Emma's case barking "DRINK THIS, GLORIA!" No joy. Her tongue was covered with a white film and her lips were cracked.

Day three. She slept through the night without a fever. She had a few bites of bread and jam for breakfast, and she followed her sister into the hospital corridor, rather wobbly, but tottering nonetheless. We breathed a sigh of relief - a corner turned. When can we go home? I asked, a bit half-heartedly. I wasn't ready to face the washing up and making my own sandwiches yet. Tomorrow, came the reply. But only if she drinks.

The next few hours were spent waving a bottle or a cup or whatever under her nose. Calm turned to exasperation as she kept refusing. But then, about 5 pm, she whimpered "appur-joose". I gave her the bottle, and she drank 200ml in one go. We were going home.

It's nice to be home. It's still chaos, I'm still sick as a dog, but it's a pleasure to see my girls fight over the dolly pram and play hide and seek. G still gets easily tired, and getting her medecine into her is a twice-daily fight, but I feel a huge relief just to hear her giggle or ask for a bi-cit. Normality, sort of.

Drawing a line

..under the recent spate of uber-narcissistic, navel-gazing posts.

An earthquake in Peru, devastating global floods, Madeleine McCann still missing. A friend-of-a-friend losing her baby in the 8th month of pregnancy. These things knock my tiny problems into perspective.

Things I am very grateful for today:
- my mummy, amazingly unruffled and patient looking after E and G
- E and G and the bean inside. Totally undeserved little bundles of joy.
- a nice warm flat with no leaks in it.
- Migros latest potato and nut bread. Sounds yuck, tastes yum.
- Vitamin B6. (Potato bread still inside!)

That's all.

Homeoquackery

In a desperate bid to avoid the workplace for a bit longer, and because moving to another continent we didn't feel was challenge enough, we thought "let's have another baby!". And so we will. I am 10 weeks pregnant.

I am also very sick. Some women have pre-eclampsia; some have difficult births; my specialist pregnancy horror is the first three months.

I've been in bed pretty much for 10 days, with a wonderful army of friends and family looking after Em and Glo. Last night, after throwing up about 5 times in 2 hours, I got so fed up I called the on-call doctor service. They sent me.....a homeopath.

I admit when you say the word 'homeopath', I hear the word 'quack,' despite not knowing anything about it or having tried any homeopathic remedy ever. (I know people rave about Echinacea, but Beecham's Colds and Flu is very effective and more readily available. I guess I've never not had a conventional medicine work for me.)

The good doctor arrived last night, didn't introduce himself, didn't ask any questions other than "you're pregnant, are you?" and didn't examine me or take any observations. I explained I'd also had diarrhoea and a fever, which he didn't seem remotely bothered by. He seemed in quite a hurry. (Perhaps he had parked illegally?) He reassured me it would be over soon, made a quip about how I was 'populating Switzerland!' and wrote out a prescription for homeopathic nausea granules which he assured were 'excellent'. Then he left. Total length of stay: 5 minutes.

Of course the proof of the pudding is in the eating...and if these granules work then I will eat my words, my hat and send a thank you letter to Dr Herbs. Can't help feeling sceptical though..

Emma and Gloria's favourite games

1. Sack of potatoes. When you pick them up and throw them onto the bed, like a sack of potatoes. Repeat. Result: high-pitched giggling.

2. Flip the pancake. When you pick each child up by the feet and flip them onto the bed, like a pancake. Repeat. Result: giggling, endless cries of "again! again!"Stop if vomiting occurs. (It has.)

3. Search and rescue. Gloria flings Brian and Bernard behind the bed for Emma to find, which involves climbling and squeezing into a tight spot. Result: giggling. Bonus points for low parent involvement.

4. Rat run. Step one: pull sofa about 1 ft away from the wall. Step two: sit back and marvel as girls chase each other through tiny tunnel for hours. Another low parent involvement game.

5. Bumblebee. Emma puts a shiny bead down the neck of my top and has to find where it pops out. She calls the bead 'the bumblebee', hence the name.

6. Lick Mummy's face. Emma chases me round the room sticking her tongue out, trying to lick my face, while I make a big "yuck!" and "urgghh!" song and dance. I don't like this one much.

7. Smear Gloria with cream. Under cover of silence, when parent is preoccupied, take any old cream and smear Gloria with it. Last time it was nappy rash cream - G looked like she was ready to swim the channel. This is not one of my favourites either.

It's fun with two.