Sick baby

She's sleeping better and better, but she's getting sicker and sicker. She's still not worryingly ill, but I feel very bad.

On Saturday night she vomited at bedtime and seemed fine afterwards. On Sunday she had a single episode of diarrhoea. On Monday she vomited at bedtime again. And today she had diarrhoea at about noon, and vomited at about one pm.

I feel bad because we were out in town, and I saw her lean forwards to rest her head on the bar of the buggy, and thought she was just tired. It wasn't until much later - at least 10 minutes - that I saw that she'd vomited. It was all over her clothes and the buggy and her shoes. We went into John Lewis for the cleanup, which took about an hour, and she ate. She does feel hungry after these bouts. Unless she's just been sick, she won't even eat biscuits, really.

So I cleaned her up and went to Boots and found a female member of staff to ask for vaginal dilators. They don't stock them and can't order them. I shall have to go mail order. She did offer me a urinary incontinence aid instead, but I declined graciously. I already have one and I can't use it because of the birth injuries.

And then we came home and watched a little video and she went down to sleep. Rob will be home shortly to take us to the doctor. I'm just fragile enough that I can't go alone.

(Remind me later to write about the conversation I overheard and joined in with the librarian today - we covered teenage mothers and the state of education in the nation and I was interested to learn that it's all the brown people's fault).

Talking to the librarian

Well, when I arrived, there was a man at the counter talking about sex education and how it causes teenage pregnancies and how "it's not a mechanics problem, it's a moral problem," and things. And the librarian seemed to be agreeing with him that there was far too much sex education and not enough reading and writing.

And the librarian came over to talk to me about it. And I pointed out that in other countries, children don't go to school until they are seven and have much more sex education than they do here and end up not pregnant and well-educated at 18. I suggested that a large part of the problem was related to the fact that anyone who is good at or enjoys being in school is in serious social trouble. The assistant librarian - the one who's so helpful about requesting Home Education books for me, nudge nudge - agreed with me.

The real librarian said that she thought it was "a cultural issue." I agreed - "Oh yes," I said, "as long as it's trendier to smash up bus-stops than to read a book, there's going to be tihs problem." She disagreed with me. "Oh no," she said, "I meant people coming here without, you know, the language, and their mothers don't change their language, so they can't help them wth their homework. They come in here all the time, you know."

If that's who she means, then, she means brown people. Grr.

She also thought that children shouldn't be taught French because it detracted from their learning English and Sums (Sums are like Maths but for children, I think). She didn't like the Swedish solution at all.

She also believes it used to be better long ago, and that it's terrible that there were adults in the adult literacy classes who couldn't read, even though they were obviously intelligent.

It was a most bizarre conversation. However, I have now sold fifteen copies of before baby walks so I only need to sell two more to buy it an ISBN. Then it'll be listed by Amazon. Ha!

(We brought Linnea to the doctor and I'm doing all the right things. We also asked at another pharmacist for the vaginal dilators and they phoned up and the customer has to order them direct, so I have to get Rob to do that because I'm shaking and crying just thinking about it. I have yet to say "vaginal dilator" out loud.)