I’m very lucky and grateful that so far I have had no serious illnesses or injuries since becoming a parent. I have, however, had a couple of bad colds that have knocked me for six, and have got my imagination going trying to concoct a replacement mummy robot-type thing which keeps baby happy, fed and comforted while you are free to sit with your head down the toilet/swig cough syrup/fever sweat your way through your pyjamas. Breastfeeding mums don’t even have the joy of dosing up on the good stuff as it appears everything can affect your supply. Super.

Unfortunately I haven’t gotten very far with this robot plan, partly due to being so busy as a new mummy and partly, well… I’m clever but I’m not “robot-builder clever”.  So what do you do when you feel like your head is full of wet sand and you are puking so much it reminds you of the first trimester and you consider doing a pregnancy test… Ha, as if!

Lying Down

Seriously, everything feels so much better when the world is turned 90 degrees.  If your baby is at the age where they can entertain themselves with their toys that’s great, and if they have a giant stuffed toy that’s even better! Get in there, be part of playtime, they don’t know that you’re half asleep on Tigger!  If you’re one of the lucky few whose baby takes lovely little naps in their cot or basket (see previous post where I hate you) then now is the perfect time to revert back to “when baby sleeps, you sleep” mode.  Those extra cat naps will make all the difference when you need to get dinner ready and you remember that there’s still a mountain of washing up to do and you have no clean plates.

Tea

Or coffee. But not coffee because eugh. (but if you do like coffee you can feel all fancy with a Tassimo or similar and imagine you’ve at least managed to go to a coffee shop despite feeling like your body is waging war on you. There aren’t as many fancy flavoured types of hot chocolate as there are coffee though, booo!)

But tea! Oh, magical tea, sweet and milky (I take one sugar, two on difficult days, and milk) but nice and strong (leave the teabag in the boiled water long enough to get nice and strong, then add a good splosh of milk), the absolute perfect cuppa. I swear I only described my perfect cup of tea to help your imagination during my expression of joy for tea. You may find that my tea preference is now etched onto your brain forever which is a nice coincidence.  Tea is actually magical and,  in some cases, all the medicine you need (disclaimer, I am not a doctor, they will give you real advice and not tea. Although I’ve not been to every doctor, I bet fancy private ones give you tea.), making you feel all cosy and calm, which is a good thing when you are shivering and sweating at the same time. See also: hot chocolate and Horlicks. Mmm. Excuse me while I make puppy dog eyes at my husband, he might make me a cup of tea.

I should add that as a parent of littles, a large percentage of your cups of tea will get left on high cupboards and shelves out of the reach of tiny hands and thus forgotten, left to go cold and sometimes a bit manky depending on how long ago they were forgotten. A moment of silence for those fallen brews.

…

Moving on!

Duvet

What more needs to be said? Cosy, soft, it’s like your bed went on holiday to your sofa. When the tiny humans are at the stage where they want to watch Frozen or Paw Patrol on repeat, bundle them into the duvet with you and let the animation numb your aching brain.

Food

Specifically, pity food. The responsible adult part of me would say that it is more important than ever to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables and slow energy-release blah blah, which of course, you should, but ice cream. Especially if you have a sore throat, nice and cold and soothing. I actually tend to go ice lolly rather than ice cream when I’m feeling a bit sandpapery, specifically orange Calippos. Not surprisingly I made my way through a few boxes of these when I was pregnant and felt a bit peaky, I may not have been able to stomach food but I knew Calippos would be there for me.  Chocolate is an obvious pick-me-up, but sadly is awful for sore throats,  (what kind of cruel joke is that?) however for pretty much every other ailment you can rely on dairy milk. (Shows husband 850g bars of dairy milk on Amazon which I am Googling for research purposes honestly…hint)

I’m sure many of you reading this list are thinking “well, duh” but we sometimes forget to take care of ourselves when we’re ill and especially when there are little humans on the scene, or there’s a man in the house with the same (yet a hundred times more life threatening) illness.

So stick the kettle on, make friends with your duvet (along with the kid and a handful of cheerios, please remember to remove before bedtime) and look forward to that magical morning where you don’t feel like your nose is full of superglue.