When you go out to see your beautiful, talented, eleven year old daughter in her first school musical (she was amazing) and you feel stressed

you should really pay attention to that feeling.

Ignoring your gut  will get you a vomiting son, pardon the pun, in the middle of the theatre foyer and then again outside and in the car on the way home.

If you ever feel the need to boast about being childfree for the first time in forever, you might like to think again.

Sending your immune compromised daughter to preschool for her first full day, in months and taking yourself out to breakfast with the husband you never see will get you

two (almost) four year olds with terrible gastro and lots of time with the husband you hardly ever see, as you stay up all night cleaning  vomit and diarrhoea.

When a teenage boy asks for a sleepover for his 13th birthday, don’t do it.

Never agree.

When he says sleepover, what he means is stay up all night, shouting at the top of his lungs with his mates, waking the small, recovering, children, keeping the others in the house and the rest of the neighbourhood  up.

 Do not voice, out loud, that you are hopeful of avoiding hospital admissions in the future.

Just don’t do it.

It will jinx you in the most extreme way and you will find yourself back in just four days

with a very sick little girl.

If you feel the need to sing the praises of the paediatrician and mention how reliable he has been of late, you should then expect that he will be ‘unavailable’ for the above admission and for any time after that for, oh, say the next two weeks.

You need to learn that you can’t rely on anyone.

Finally, do not ever

ever

tell the nurses that you just don’t catch gastro, that you have a stomach of iron

because

you will catch it

and you will feel very ill.

Lessons well and truly learnt.