A bit of a worry

Well, we've had our first admission to hospital as parents. But it wasn't A&E for our runabout falloveralot toddler: it was for our little boy.

Thomas was out of sorts on Friday and had a raised temperature when we tested him in the evening. We made use of the family doctor-grandma, and then the local out of hours service, and then the emergency GP at the hospital. We were admitted to the children's ward just before midnight. Nobody could really say what the problem was, just that babies his age shouldn't be having high temperatures at all.

A worrying and stressful night followed. We started with trying to get blood out of the tiny veins in his wrists, it was horrible watching how slowly it dripped out into the tiny bottle they were trying to fill. He was then given what seemed like a huge amount of saline into the drip, and we were sent off for chest x-rays, where I needed to wear an iron apron and hold him down. The worst was the lumbar puncture, which only worked on the third attempt with an awful lot of squealing in between. By then they decided to give him intravenous antibiotics in case in turned out to be bacterial meningitis, some baby paracetamol, and then checked him in for the night.

Elspeth stayed in with him while I came home by 3 in the morning, to be here for Marisca (and relieve the emergency babysitter from next door).

The test results started coming through during the weekend, and he kept being dosed. We had to do a lot of juggling and call in some favours to keep looking after Marisca. By Sunday he was more or less his normal self and his temperature was down to normal. Eventually they let us go at the end of Monday afternoon.

It was a really really difficult night on Friday - so many tests that upset our boy and didn't yield any knowledge to tell us what the matter was. He started to look more comfortable on Saturday but we didn't know that he'd be home for Christmas until lunchtime on Christmas Eve. Not the kind of preparation we had in mind. He's home now and definitely back to normal, and I'm overjoyed to have both him and Elspeth back at home.