a medal

Very early this morning I had one of those parenting experiences that should earn you a badge of honour for service to the infant community.

Lucien has a cold- blocked nose, phlegmy cough, generally annoyed. No temperature, so he's not dopey or too unhappy. But he is unwell, and this cold has his throat on a hair trigger. When he woke for his usual 5am bottle he guzzled it down, then sat up, coughed and threw it all up, all over me and himself and the couch.

No matter, I changed him, wiped the couch and got new pyjamas on myself. Then he sat up on my knee, burped and followed through with a huge vomit, again. So I changed him, wiped off the couch, changed me and I brought him into my bed to snuggle down and snooze until dawn.

In my bed, he coughed, it caught in his throat and heave ho, away we go again. Yep, threw up all on my bed, the doona, my last clean pyjama/t-shirt and himself. Again. Bugger. I never knew 240mls could stretch so far.

So I stripped the bed, made it fresh, found the last clean item he had to wear, dug out my year 12 school t-shirt (like, the bottom, bottom of the wardrobe pile) and at 6.05 we finally snuggled in. I had been awake and changing clothes for an hour. At 6.25 Gabriel woke and could not be tricked into going back to sleep, Lucien could not be settled either and so we began the day. It's a tough morning, let me tell you. For a start the washing pile is already half a metre high!

Only when I'm flagging at 8pm in the evening and berating myself for not getting on top of everything I need to do before the next day do I remember. 'Oh yeah, you have been awake since 5am. Time for bed, brainiac."

It wasn't a particularly gross ordeal, nor stressful, Louie wasn't screaming or distressed. Last night was not really badge of honour stuff like midnight rushes to casualty or like when 3am gastro strikes. It's just sometimes I wish I wasn't doing this alone. Right now, in particular, this morning, I wanted a helper. A husband who was home to share part of this burden with me, just someone else to help. But we always want what we can't have, right? This is the lot of the baker's wife.