If you’ve seen my Facebook post, you will already know that most of this last week has been dominated by Aidan being poorly, and eventually going to A&E via ambulance on Friday night!

To cut a long story short, he had a cough which was getting worse so I took him to the pharmacy on Friday afternoon. We were supposed to be going to our Goddaughter’s birthday party and staying overnight, but I’d already sent Nathan and Sophia on their way, keeping Aidan at home out of the action. I was planning on getting him settled and then cleaning and knitting, followed by an early night.

So I went to the pharmacist, hoping to put my mind at rest. I played her the recording of his cough on my phone and she sent me to the walk-in. After triage, a poonami and an hour or so wait, we saw a wonderful nurse who got me to paint a detailed picture of what Aidan is normally like and how he’d been for the past couple of days. She decided we needed to go to A&E, and said I should have another adult with me in the car. I called Nathan’s Mum, who set off from Southport to help. The lovely nurse watched Aidan have another coughing fit, and noticed a tug in his neck. She said we now needed to go to hospital by ambulance.

In the meantime he had some medicine to help open his airways, which helped, and by the time we were in the ambulance, he was quite calm. We got to the hospital where they did more thorough checks and observed him for longer. In the end, they diagnosed him with bronchiolitis and we were home at around 11.30pm.

A few things about this whole experience:

– Ambulance passenger seats are very high off the ground. My legs couldn’t touch the floor and I felt weirdly child like when my legs swung back and forth as we moved.

– The paramedic asked us where we would like to go. I never imagined I’d be asked this question. I assumed we’d have been assigned a hospital to go to based on capacity or wait time. Nope, I got to choose. The paramedic said he’d want to be at Ormskirk if it was his son, and the nurse agreed. Ormskirk it was!

– I felt like I became part of a little team with the healthcare professionals. At one point Aidan was having a feed with a thermometer was under his arm. When it beeped, I read out the number and the nurse put it into the system. At another point, when giving him the oral medicine, the doctor asked ‘how do we want to do this?’ I said ‘like the calpol I guess, down either cheek and slowly?’ ‘OK, there you go’ he said as he handed me the syringe.

– Having Nathan’s Mum and Dad at the hospital was so helpful. Not only the butties and the flask of coffee, which were great, but having somebody sat with my gear in the waiting room so I could just pick up Aidan and walk straight into whichever room I was called into. It’s a tiny thing but it made it all so much easier!

– The Doctor at A&E said ‘I rarely see a Mum breastfeeding, so well done’. I know breastfeeding rates are shockingly low in this country, but he really surprised me with that one!

– The same Doctor was using a yellow Lamy pen. With all that was going on around me, I still spotted and admired nice stationary.

– I spent all of Saturday feeling very numb. I was tired, of course, but emotionally, I felt so fuzzy. I know most of what happened was ‘just to be on the safe side’ but I felt like we were being passed up and up the chain, and it was quite scary. I’ve never been in an ambulance before.

– The guilt was oppressive. I felt guilty that he was poorly. Did I dress him properly? Did I expose him to too many people? Have I let too many people outside of our household kiss him? Is the walk from the bathroom to the nursery too cold when he’s got damp hair from the bath? Why did I let Nathan and Sophia make a joke of him latching onto their noses when I was finishing a job and Aidan wanted a feed? So, there’s all that.

And then there’s the NHS guilt. A very old lady was behind us in the queue in the walk-in, and she was very upset about her wait. By taking an ambulance from Kirkby to Ormskirk and only waiting 40 minutes for it, did we keep somebody waiting who needed it more? Or somebody who had been in need for a really long time? If I’d have gone sooner, we might not have needed the ambulance at all.

I’ve no idea if it’s just me who has thoughts like this. The lovely Emily who comes to see me from the perinatal mental health team would probably say that it’s not. I think, though, although these things flit across my mind in the moment, I managed to stay calm and didn’t give oh my gosh we’re in an ambulance, **** vibes off to Aidan.

Anyway, we’re all recovering. We’ve slept lots. Aidan is coughing less often. Sophia loved her first ever sleepover without us. Nathan and I have both had lots of smiles from Aidan today. And, because he’s so much on the mend, Aidan went to Lullababy class again today, and didn’t we have a lot to share when we got there!