I’ve always been a bit germ-phobic, but since Iz’s surgery days I’ve basically been operating at lab-sterile levels of unhinged. My hands still haven’t recovered from the near-boiling washes and industrial hand sanitiser. We were sterilising until she was 18 months old (she’s now 20 months)… which makes it particularly ironic that she will not eat actual food, but will absolutely eat anything that is not meant for human consumption.

She is chaos in a tiny body.

So naturally, we decided—last minute—to go on a half-term break to Wales.

The first cottage cancelled.

The second fell through.

The third also said “absolutely not.”

The fourth booking stuck, and against what can only be described as clear universal warning signs, we packed the car.

Our holiday track record is… questionable.

Dubai postponed due to chicken pox. Dubai attempt two: eldest vomits on arrival at the airport. Holiday booked pre-pregnancy: I spend departure day in hospital being rehydrated thanks to Hyperemesis gravidarum. Two years later: we finally go away and both my husband and I end up needing urgent medical care (separately, because efficiency), everyone gets colds, and Iz vomits from the heat.

So yes. The bar was low.

Travel Day

Our son wakes up feeling sick. Not “nervous tummy.” Proper feels sick. We message the football coach to say the dude can’t play. Our boy however insists we are still going away. We ignore what is clearly fate tapping us on the shoulder and saying, “Don’t.”

We go… I did however pack the sick bags and grabbed some puppy pads (call it Mum’s intuition)

Night 1

Iz hates the cottage. Eventually sleeps at 2am.

My husband sleeps shortly after.

I sleep at 4am.

Everyone wakes at 7am.

We are thriving.

Night 2

Confidence returns (mistake).

23:30 – Iz redecorates the cot and is sick for five hours.

Our boy sleeps through. A small mercy.

We get maybe an hour of sleep. She seems mostly okay… until 4pm, when she redecorates her Dad.

Night 3

Delusion returns. Iz sleeps though.

So our son tags in and completely destroys the twin room.

There is no Night 4.

He wakes up insisting we are going to the beach. I listen to the universe this time. My husband attempts optimism—until Iz redecorates him again. We wash approximately seventeen tonnes of bedding and drive home.

By now I’m properly worried. With any child you worry—but when they’ve already been through surgeries and you know their little tummy inside out (and, in Iz’s case, her little bottom too), sickness hits differently. She hadn’t had her Movicol (not needed but it’s impossible to gauge fully what’s needed when and this is our first sick bug), wasn’t keeping much down, and I was spiralling.

The hospital reassured us it sounded like a bug, not a blockage or stricture (2 things I fear more than sickness bugs). We stayed home.

Then, because this is our life, I hung up the phone and realised… I also felt dreadful, put it down to lack of sleep and adrenaline and went off to bed as normal.

No… no… no… The plague claimed me and holy guacamole was it a plague and a half my poor boy and girl (no idea how the boy only managed to puke once but grateful)

My husband—miraculously—did not fall. He solo-parented while I was entirely out of action for a day. I resurfaced slowly. Iz stopped vomiting. Our boy stayed upright. We’ve now had multiple days with no puke.

Iz is back on her milk today.

And do you know what?

I have been absolutely terrified of her getting a sickness bug. Terrified of how her body would cope. Terrified of hospital trips. Terrified of blockages, strictures and what it would do to her.

And she did it.

We did it.

We survived The Plague.

I didn’t unravel (much). We didn’t rush to A&E. We monitored, we coped, we got through.

So yes, the holiday was a disaster.

But honestly?

Go us… packing tarpaulin sheets for our next hol but as we have discovered, you really never can be too prepared.