Christmas and delays.

Good morning mummy lovers,

Parents and carers we have made it to the end of this term! Wooohoooo. I won’t lie, part of my absence from the Facebook page recently has been directly been because my boy monster has been poorly for 6 weeks.

We have been battling a major chest infection that has taken 5 lots of antibiotics plus some major fuck ups courtesy of our GP.  Just after Halloween the boy monster became really poorly as it started raining heavily whilst we were trick or treating and whilst we only stayed in the rain for about 45 minutes it clearly knocked my boy monster for six. 

The weekend of fireworks night it became very clear he was extremely poorly so much so he had to be put inside to watch the fireworks. Within a couple of days we started noticing he was having an allergic reaction to something bad as his eyes became swollen as did his lips.  So we took him to the doctors and he was given amoxicillin tablets and antihistamines as it turned out he was battling a chest infection. 

A week later and one course of antibiotics finished he started coughing (more like barking like a dog), so we took him back to the doctors and he was given more antibiotics due to crackling on his chest when he was breathing indicating he still wasn’t over this chest infection. Good news was he seemingly hasn’t had any weird swellings on his face since taking the different antihistamines, but another course was finished a week later and he was still coughing and temperatures started popping up randomly. 

So once again we took him back to the doctors and he was given Clarithromycin - now we’ve had some issues with Arithromycin in the past and it made him start vomiting and the two are in the same category but we were assured they shouldn’t make him sick. Day 3 of these tablets he starts feeling sick and we just knew they weren’t suitable for him so we had to stop them.

So back to the doctors as he was now coughing up chunks of goop. They agreed to stop taking the ones that was making him feel sick. So they gave him a 4 day dose of Doxycycline.

Now bear in mind that whilst all this is happening he’s only made it to school for around 3 days each week that has gone by. So he finished his 4 day dose of meds and goes back to school the next day. 12pm comes and we get a call from the school asking if he can be given some paracetamol, we said yes as he had been having paracetamol every morning with his new antihistamines. 15 minutes later were called back and they are telling us actually he needs to go home as he looks and sounds like shit.

Confused as we had finished his 4 day course of antibiotics and thought he would start feeling better. Apparently not, as he gets home and looks like death warmed up yet again.

So once again last week we take him back to the doctors and Mr Mummy Love is under strict instructions to not leave until they give him something that is actually going to work. The boy monster is given a breathing test which because of how tall he is for his age they had to base the results of this test on how tall he was. He passed for his age ability but failed for his height ability. Doctor then asks what was he given last week as we had told them we thought the 4 day course had done him some good as he was actually coughing the crap up from his chest.

So here’s where it gets interesting, we tell them he was given a 4 day course of doxycycline. Doc then looks at Mr Mummy Love and questions - 4 days worth? Yes he confirms. Doctor then goes why has anyone given him a 4 day course when this antibiotic is a strong 7 day course? Mr ML says well that’s what he was given and he finished them 2 days ago. Doctor sighed and said because he hadn’t had anymore doxycycline in the last 2 days he now had to start a new course for 7 days that he must totally finish. He was also sent away with a pump and aerochamber because he had failed the breathing test.

So 7 days finished on Wednesday this week and he was sent in to school on Monday which when he returned home he states he had to take his coat off during lessons but he was freezing cold as the school he’s at is an echo school that doesn’t actually have heating as it’s drilled in to the ground or something like that and he came home Monday coughing again as bad as he had done in the previous weeks. So we’ve had to keep him off school again this whole week as we received an email from his school stating that strep a and covid was currently running rampant through the school and it’s teachers.

With me being clinically vulnerable and all that jazz of having covid 3 times being this close to Christmas we just knew we couldn’t send him in with the possibility of him catching either strep a or covid. 

So if you’ve read this far congratulations and I hope I’ve explained the madness that’s happened in the last 6 weeks. Obviously with him being so poorly I have had to look after him everyday plus the girl monster has been off a couple of times also with a different infection so I really just couldn’t work.

Now with all that madness explained I shall give you an update on what’s happening with orders, All orders have been cut out BUT these strikes with Royal Mail and subsequent delays with other couriers have made it basically impossible to send completed orders out. 

Im up to around orders placed in September now, but as previously mentioned the Royal Mail strikes have us small businesses by the metaphorical balls. I completed and sent out a couple of orders last week and I know they still have not been delivered up to when I started writing this blog post. Now with these delays and it being the Christmas period either Royal Mail are really actually behind or the orders I sent last week have gone missing. 

With this I’ve chosen to not send out completed orders until after Christmas because there are still some strike days approaching next week and also if these missing orders sent last week have actually gotten lost then that means I have to remake them all and I simply can’t do that with all the orders I have.

Hopefully things will improve after Christmas with Royal Mail and other couriers will have a reduced workload which means no orders sitting around gathering dust or being left behind somewhere. 

Hopefully you can understand why I’ve chosen to take this action and all my orders that have been affected by this I shall ensure to provide you with an extra gift as a way of saying thank you for waiting and being patient. 

I usually take the Christmas holidays off to spend with the husband and kids however I won’t be doing that this year because of the delays that have affected me all year. 

So I hope you all have a beautiful Christmas with all your loved ones and make sure you follow the Facebook page - Made With Mummy Love to see any posts I put up of orders or things I’ve made,

Stay safe and take it easy as I know how stressful it can be during these days of higher living costs. Just remember it’s not about the amount of presents your children get from you, it’s about the experience and magic of Christmas. 

Don’t forget you can search within your local areas for open “warm hubs” such as public libraries etc that are being kept open to the public so people have somewhere warm to stay during the day. 

Much Love

Mrs Mummy Love 💗 

***EDIT***

So we had a lovely Christmas yesterday which I hope you all have had also BUT last night the kids decided to make a big den in the boy monsters room. He then happened to message us as the girl monster had fallen asleep inside the den and was blocking the only way out for him. So we went to his room to pull the girl monster out of the den and get her in her own bed and they were adamant that they wanted to keep the den as it was so they could use it today. We said ok that’s fine just get out so you can sleep in your own beds and it just so happened that the boy monster climbed out a different way than where we had pulled the girl monster out (at the end of his bed he has a big 4ft gap between end of his bed and the wall and this is where we’ve piled all his panda teddys as he’s been panda crazy since he was born and it’s a big area at the end of his small double bed so he tends to use it as a place to snuggle in to and chill out) and the way he came out involved climbing over the pile/corner of pandas and on to his bed from the bottom. 

It was at this point as he was climbing through the panda I saw something on his wall that looked like a mark or something. So when he got out the way I went and started moving pandas and discovered that a lot of them was damp and it was at this point we discovered this.

To our horror we discovered black mould in this corner where his pandas once lived. Once we saw this both our parent heads clicked - shit this is what has been making him poorly. Mr Mummy Love was even asked if we had any mould in our home a few doctor’s appointments ago, which we obviously had said no because we hadn’t seen this corner prior to last night.

On Christmas Eve the mummy love grandparents came over so we could do our Christmas shopping at tescos without having to take the monsters with us and it so happened that my dad who’s a plumber had been in his room then and had noticed the radiator wasn’t on so he turned it on and checked it was all working and everything.

Upon this discovery last night we started looking around his room to check there wasn’t mould anywhere else, we then discovered his window was dripping wet with condensation as he has a black out blind up at the window plus curtains and it’s very rare either of them are open to actually see the window (other than the summer when the windows are open because it’s hot). So we now think that because the room had condensation and no heating in it (boy monster sleeps with his door open so don’t worry heat was getting in his room to keep him warm of an evening plus this child will never fricking wear PJ’s as he claims he’s hot regardless of the weather outside) and teddy pandas against the walls it’s caused this mould. We popped our dehumidifier in there last night and it was showing 90% humidity and google tells us it’s not safe to have a room over 55% humidity and since it was turned on at 11pm last night it’s collected 2/3 of a tank of water from the room. It is now showing 54% humidity on the dehumidifier so the room is drying out.

Here are some pics of behind the wallpaper that this morning we noticed it was now dog eared because it was damp and it’s dried out more than it was last night. 

As you can see the wall behind the wallpaper was covered in mould also, but the only good thing is that the wallpaper would only come off to about 4ft from the floor so we have managed to chop the mouldy wallpaper off and still have a roll of wallpaper we can then match up and replace in the now bare patches. 

We have also used some really great mould spray on the affected walls and so far they look amazing. We are still going to repeat treating the walls so we can ensure it is all definitely gone and it’s safe for the boy monster to go back in his room and sleep in his bed. 

As you can see the walls are looking so much better now and this was only after the first application of the spray.

Now where does this leave us in terms of getting the boy monster back to top health. He was once again taken to the docs on Wednesday last week where they then said he needed a chest X-ray and he was booked in for one and went on Thursday last week. So I presume it’ll be in the new year when we hear back about the X-ray but we will once again (hopefully for the last time regarding this long issue he’s had of being so poorly) take him back to the GP when they are next open which we think is Wednesday this week so we can update the GP on the findings we discovered on Christmas Day. If you google “mould allergy” every symptom that describes what it would look like if someone was suffering from a mould allergy is the exact same symptoms (blocked nose, sneezing, coughing, wheezing, swollen eyes and red itchy eyes) the boy monster has been having since this started 8 weeks ago now and the good news is it can be resolved with a totally different course of antibiotics and can be potentially seen on the X-ray of his chest.

So fingers crossed we can get him back to good health quickly as it’s been such a long period of time.

Take care and if your monsters start experiencing something similar to what I’ve stated about my boy monster definitely keep chasing your GP for answers regardless of how long it seems to be taking.

Tara - Mrs Mummy Love