To ask for your positive sickness bug avoidance stories and give a spiralling mum some hope!

[Edenmum2]

Ok. Situation - DD4 sick in the night on Saturday (2-3 times and then again a couple of times on Sunday) recovered quickly. No diarrhoea. Nobody else she was in contact with have got it (and she saw a LOT of people in the days leading up) we are now passed 48 hours since her last bout.

DH is in currently in spare bedroom saying he feels so sick he can’t move. He is, I would say, prone to hyperbole but does look pretty ropey. No sickness yet but seems to be coming.

People I need your stories of hope - I’m completely spiralling, I HATE being sick, I have a heart arrhythmia which being sick triggers and it’s genuinely awful. I had 2 bugs last year and they were both hell.

Any stories of you escaping when multiple people in the household were struck down?? Or maybe one had it bad but the other just a dicky tummy? I’m living in constant anxiety right now and can’t even pinpoint why….i’m just totally and irrationally terrified of them. Feel free to tell me to get a grip.

Haha thanks! That’s cheered me up. I’m not generally scared of any illnesses but noro is like a giant looming anxiety cloud that follows me around every soft play I’ve ever visited…..

I'm terribly emetophobic so I know how you feel.

Weirdly we've never passed anything round in our house though. We have a 6 year old and she's had mild sickness episodes but neither me and my DH have caught any. In fact generally if one of us gets a sick bug it's usually isolated and doesn't pass.

My DH is a special case - I can honestly only count about two, maybe three occasions he's had any kind of sickness in the 18 years we've been together. For me, maybe 3 or 4 proper sick bugs that's about it.

You get the impression don't you that these bugs inevitably wipe a whole household out as you hear so many stories, yet in reality I don't think that's the case for most families.

The last sickness bug I picked up from my eldest was conveniently when I was 9 months pregnant with my youngest - had a chest infection to boot and it all happened in that poxy 40 degree summer we had - never felt so sorry for myself. It’s now been over 3 years and I’ve not picked up one sickness bug from either of them and there have been PLENTY. Dettol in all forms, segregation of the plague ridden and boil washes are your best friend. Good luck!

Thanks, I really appreciate this. Yes you definitely hear about it ripping through households, although now I think about it it’s never happened to us that way really - it’s always just been me who has succumbed in the past. Probably why I’m extra nervous tbh, feel like I’m especially susceptible!

Thing is, the anxiety is worse than the event itself. Obviously it's not pleasant and nobody likes being sick, but when it happens you've just got to go with it and let it pass. Nothing you can do.
Over the years I've been steadily training myself to just accept this fact and it has slowly dawned on me that the anticipation is the absolute worst part because you don't know if it's going to happen, and it can hang over you 24/7. The last time I was sick I was surprisingly calm because I knew it was happening, no more anticipation.

When one of mine used to be sick, I would put them in their bedroom, use rubber gloves handling their sick bowls, get the antibac out and spray all the door handles, phones, anything like that, and ask them to use one bathroom (if you have two) and then use the other one.

I never got sick off their sickness bugs, and they didn't used to get sick off each other.

Lots of handwashing.

My children (now adult) laugh at my 'quarantine' way of dealing with sickness, I used to do it with colds/flu too. I used to do it in a very loving way- like why don't you stay in bed, here's the TV, here's your bin for tissues, deliver all food and drink and pamper them in bed but the real reason was so we didn't all get ill.

I'm not good with sicky or snotty children, and it kind of worked and they laugh about it now. Hugs at arms length as well.

Some workplaces have a wfh when you're sick policy, for colds and bugs. Some people homeschool. Neither of these things are possible for me, I can't wfh and wouldn't be able to, or want to, homeschool, but it works for some.
Windows/other ventilation actually seems to work, but for the last few years, no one seems to want to do that.