clean/dirty

Graham has a week off work coming up (yippee!) and we're planning to take Dulcie swimming at least a few times.  She'd never been in water deeper than her baby bath before, so we thought we should start building her up for the pool by taking her in the full-size bath with us.  I took the first bath duty on Sunday night and it went very well.  Dulcie looked confused and a little worried when she got in at first, but it didn't take too long before she got VERY, VERY excited.  Her arms and legs were flailing everywhere and she soaked herself, her mother and our bathroom because she was splashing so much.  She just couldn't get enough of it.  Check out that happy wee face.  Aw!  I think she really tired herself out too because she was out like a light almost as soon as she was dried off and in her jammies.  I'm taking this as a good omen for the swimming pool and am quite excited for next week, especially since Dulcie has a swimming suit that will make her look like a giant strawberry.

That's the clean part of this post and the dirty part is also Dulcie related.  I took Dulcie into town yesterday on the hunt for a much-needed waterproof jacket for myself.  I was hoping for a bish-bash-bosh sort of a morning, but should have known that it wouldn't be so easy and the hunt was dragging on a bit longer than expected.  I had taken a few snacks for Dulcie but no lunch, so when she started shouting for food (louder and earlier than is normal for her, although I didn't think much of it at the time) I had to stop off and buy her an emergency jar of ready-made stuff and take her to the parent/baby room in John Lewis to feed her.  After wolfing the food down, she was still unhappy and looking for more so I gave her some milk.  After a bit of wind was expelled (more than was normal, but I didn't think much of it again) we eventually set off back on our jacket quest and Dulcie seemed unusually sleepy, but otherwise happy.  Anyway, long story short, in the middle of H&M on Buchanan Street, out of nowhere, Dulcie started vomiting and not in a way I had ever seen her vomit before.  It was very dramatic and quite scary.  She was literally covered in sick from her chin down to her feet and it was all over her pram.  I was wishing I hadn't bought her something so orange/full of tuna to eat!  Once she stopped puking, she fell very soundly asleep with a green face and tears in her eyes :(  I almost never take Dulcie further than walking distance from home when it's just the two of us so it was cruelly ironic that the one day I did venture further afield was the day that the vomiting would strike, and it was a horrible feeling to be stranded in Glasgow's city centre with a poorly baby, something I hadn't really experienced before.  I didn't exactly know what to do about it all.  I had a change of clothes in the bag, but thought it could take me almost as long to find somewhere to change her as it would to get her home and there was a fair chance she'd just be sick all over the clean clothes anyway.  In the end I just ran for the bus and got her home as fast as I could and she didn't wake up or even move the whole way.  I tried to make myself useful by stroking her hair and holding her hand, but I don't think it made much difference.  Once home, she woke up when I took her out of the pram to clean her up and once she was clean she seemed pretty much back to her usual self (phew) although she was less dramatically sick a few more times throughout the afternoon.  The pram was not so easy to sort out as the sick had gone everywhere, in through all the holes where the straps go etc.  I ended up having to dismantle the whole thing to get into all the nooks and crannies and spent hours scrubbing with bleach to get rid of the radioactive orange stains.  I spent a fair part of this evening putting the thing back together and still found some nasty little pockets that I'd missed in the cleaning yesterday.  Ugh.  Anyway, I think calmness and cleanliness have been fully restored to both pram and baby and I am feeling like I can chalk off another formative mum-type experience.  Did anybody else want to read about this sicky nightmare?  Most probably not, but I kind of wanted to record the trauma for myself - a time when Dulcie really needed me and I had to think on my feet but it all turned out OK in the end, another reminder that you really can make up parenting as you go.