Kerry and I have been operating on Defcon 4 over recent nights. Officially a state of peace was in situ but we we’ve been working under heightened intelligence and increased security due to Amy’s recent episode of croup and her general poor sleeping. I took an executive decision to upgrade this to Defcon 3 yesterday afternoon when during a tickling session her giggling altered from her usual tee-he-he to a very distinctive hur-hur-hur, characteristic of an upcoming chest infection.
Sure enough at 3:33 this morning (I remember the exact time because I recall thinking in a sleep addled state that this was exactly a third of an hour) Amy woke up crying and panting like she’d just run a marathon. A puff or two of her inhaler reduced this a little, but we were still concerned enough for a trip to A&E to get her checked out. As the parent who did not have to go to work in the morning I was designated ambulance driver and set off into the night.
Of course by the time we got there her breathing had returned to normal, I’m convinced she does it intentionally just to make me look like a neurotic parent. I remember the first time we ever took her to A&E; she was around three months old and just wouldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t a normal cry either, it was high pitched and tortured and sounded to my new-parent ears like she was in excruciating agony because several of her internal organs had spontaneously exploded. We rushed to the hospital and I dropped Kerry and Amy off at the entrance to start the booking in process. I then went on a parking space hunt and was so stressed with worry that I backed the car into a concrete bollard. By the time I actually got in there Amy and Kerry were in a booth with a doctor and Amy was cooing and gurgling like she’d never been upset in her entire life. Our explanation of “Well she was crying†felt a little weak, and for a moment I was vaguely tempted to surreptitiously poke her with something sharp just to save face.
A&E last night was incredibly busy for 4am on a Wednesday night. There were a couple of rather intoxicated and unsavoury characters who made me a little nervous. One in particular obviously made the staff uneasy too as he had a couple of security guards following him around. I spend a lot of time in A&E during the course of my job, and a part of my work is calming potentially violent people down. However it feels a lot different when you have your name badge on than it does when you have a two year old clinging to you because the nasty man is shouting. Fortunately we were moved to the paediatric waiting room relatively quickly and from there it was just a case of keeping her entertained while waiting to see a doctor to listen to her chest for any infection. There wasn’t any, so we went home and back to bed.
As a reward for being so good at the hospital, and as an incitement for her to allow us to administer her inhaler when she first woke up, I told her that today I’d dye her hair pink like Stephanie’s from Lazytown. Watch this space for pictures.
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