Troubles in the night

Ever the hero, I jumped out of bed and raced for the bathroom. It was nearly two in the morning and this wasn’t the first time Jamie had woken us up to the sounds of vomiting.


We had a bit of a broken sleep last night; my six year old apparently has a bit of a tummy bug.

My wife had got up the first couple of times that he had been sick and so I reluctantly got out of bed to take my turn and go to do some back rubbing and cuddle giving. I resisted the urge to have a little man to man chat with him about the fact that he had completely cramped my style earlier. Jamie had  awoken and complained of a stomach ache, just as I had finished spending half an hour running around shutting windows, cranking the heating up, putting small lamps on the floor, lighting candles, fetching wine, giving foot rubs, checking that Mars is aligned with Jupiter and all the other odds and sods required to convince his mum that perhaps tonight could be ‘treat night’ ( note to self – now that I’ve seen it written down, I’m beginning to see why asking for ‘treat night’ doesn’t work, perhaps it’s time to change the name). For some reason the possibility of a young child coming running past, spraying sick everywhere at any moment, wasn’t conducive to a sexy mood and so the idea was scrapped. One look in Jamie’s distraught eyes as he bent over the toilet, was enough for me to forgive him (forgiven, not forgotten though you little monkey – kids are the best damn contraceptive on the planet!)

My bravado, when I patted Jo on the shoulder so early in the morning and told her to “leave this one to me – you go back to sleep love”, didn’t entirely pay off. My boy was just finishing what looked like a pretty straight forward operation, so I gave him the love expected and merrily congratulated myself at my all round heroism. In the peace of the night, my son turned to me and said a sentence which will probably haunt my sleep for some years…

“There is a little bit of sick on my bed Dad, it’s under the covers”

OH

A little bit?

This was possibly one of the biggest understatements since the head of mine safety at a Chilean mine rang up his boss and said “We’ve had a bit of an incident boss, nothing major but I could do with you coming over and having a look at something”.

I spent five minutes of hell, scraping chunks off his sheet and stripping his bed while suppressing the noise of my retching and heaving, in order not to wake his older brother. I found clean pyjamas and did my best to look strong and fatherly while holding soggy sheets out at arms length en route back to the bathroom and fighting involuntary stomach contractions.

Eventually, after far too much blood sweat and tears had been produced, much to my son’s amusement, the bed was changed and a cute little monster was snuggled back up in it. I spent another few minutes scrubbing my arms and hands before returning to bed. I tapped Jo on the shoulder again to let her know what I’d done. She didn’t sound anywhere near as impressed and grateful as I’d imagined so I told her again, just in case she hadn’t properly understood. It seems she had. I hid under the covers and pretended to be asleep until she had calmed down; eventually I drifted back off to sleep.

Half an hour later…

I could hear him throwing up again and Jo was death sleeping. Death sleeping is a little like deaf sleeping only without the snoring. Either way you cannot hear what is going on and so do not wake up, but with death sleeping you are also completely still and quiet. It says only one thing – I am going nowhere because I am dead, you deal with it!

I jumped out of bed again and headed for the toilet, only to find Jamie stood on the edge of the hall carpet facing into the bathroom. He hadn’t made it. Not only had he not made it, but he was still going. I picked him up and lifted him over the pool of mess on the floor and repositioned him in front of the toilet. This time I admitted defeat. I knew I was way out of my depth here. There are times in a man’s life when he has to face the facts, swallow his pride and call in the cavalry. Luckily I had some big guns in support to bring on and as usual she was cooler than The Fonz and faster than Usain Bolt. Before I could blink, the floor was clean, the toilet was clean, Jo was clean, Jamie was clean, clean pyjamas were deployed, and everyone else was back in bed. I stood there flapping my arms about for a while telling imaginary people not to panic, and then sat picking chunks of carrot out from between my toes. Eventually it sank in that the whirlwind that had just passed through, had in fact been that multi tasking anomaly that I’m lucky to call my wife. It’s a little like having a reverse Tasmanian Devil come past you, your eyes can’t pick up on what is happening, all you can see is a dust cloud, but afterwards everything is tidied and sorted and fixed. Nobody actually knows how wives do this; it is one of those mysteries that would even stump Thelma from Scooby Doo.

Any way, the stress of very nearly having to sort out a floor covered in sick wiped me out and I genuinely didn’t hear a thing for the rest of the night, though I believe there was at least one more incident involving the carpet. This morning I remembered that I needed to be in work a little earlier for some reason, and legged it out of the house as fast as possible.

Don’t worry though, I’m pretty caring and brave, so just as soon as I was safely at work and had drank a reassuring up of tea, I texted to find out how things were going. Mother and child are recovering from their ordeal nicely and dad had better buy some flowers (and not from the petrol station either) on the way home if he is hoping for another attempt at ‘treat night’ this year!