Oh the dreaded baby bugs. The ones that get your baby and then they get you. And everyone else. I know I know, they are good really, helping bébé build and strengthen his immune system… But they are nasty. Apparently they are at their most prevalent when your bébé first starts nursery or goes to creche / pre-school or indeed anywhere they mix with other little ones. For some reason (je ne sais quoi) Mr FF and I assumed that we would be immune to these bugs. Bien sur! Bebe FF is made of special stuff. He won’t get sick! Nor will we! That supposition has already proven to be merdique. Zut alors.
Let me give you ze gory.
Last week we flew to France for an impromptu full “French F” family gathering. We had woken to the unusual sight, or rather smell, of a sicky Bébé FF. We didn’t have time to ponder other than to assume it was the end of his first cold, which happened earlier in the week, and went on our merry way to the airport. He seemed fine, just tired. Naturally we left ourselves -15 minutes to do the 45++ minute route through security and to Gate 5,638 at Gatwick airport, in order to join our Squeasyjet flight. We flew through the airport. Thanks to the legendary Babyzen we made it, boarded and were feeling pretty smug.
You may know that when flying with bébé you should try to get them to suck on something to prevent sore ears on departure and landing. Dumdum wasn’t cutting it, so I offered up the Mummadum aka babylons and sat back waiting for the flight to be over and another journey nailed. (Side note: Bébé FF has travelled a lot since he was born and has already flown, so this wasn’t quite as exciting as his first flight, but it is all still tres novel. Second side note: Bébé FF is growing teeth. I didn’t particularly want to leave him chewing, if you know what I mean. Once in the air I removed him and gave him a good pat on the back.)
Bebe FF is very good at burping (like his father) and he emitted a rather noisey burp as we bounced through some clouds. I congratulated him, as I always do (it is going to be terribly confusing when I start telling him not to burp in public because it’s rude… ) and then he did it again. This one sounded a bit… “wet”. Yuk. He seemed fine so we laughed about it and I even whispered to Mr FF that it was a good job he wasn’t the type of baby to projectile vom everywhere because, well, could you even imagine!
Two minutes later and we didn’t need to use our imagination. It happened. Vomageddon. More milky sloppy stuff was coming out of Bébé FF then has been put in in a week. It was like the scene from Team America. Except it was just a centimetre away from my face and mostly aimed at my chest. And my lap.
Poor little lamb was shocked by the whole thing and naturally quite restless. I was covered in vomito with Bébé FF held up in the air. Mr FF momentarily transformed into a French version of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’. Paralysed in shock I had to shout out commands. FYI I’m good at that. The poor, smartly dressed young lady next to Mr FF practically jumped out of her seat and proceeded to pace the aisle for the next 20 minutes as we frantically tried to do something about all the sick. Lucky because I would have had her tasked with vom-cleaning had she hung around.
“Get sick bags!” I cried, not really sure why. Bit late. Bébé FF was a trooper and despite our frantic attempts at cleaning stayed calm and didn’t fuss. At one point, even the pacing smart lady got so frustrated with the level of faffing she literally grabbed the change bag, which Mr FF was trying to close – and failing (OK, we have a lot of emergency stuff in there. It came in useful so it’s worth the bag being so full it overflows!) and attempted to zip it herself. I think she was offended by the abuse Mr FF was giving the poor bag (it is a frenchie Longchamp), men just aren’t delicate with ze bags are they?!
The only positive about all of this was we finally got revenge on Squeasyjet for being so blinking ennuyant with their bag policy. For all those times you made me cram my handbag into my mini travel bag. Which was overflowing. In your face Squeasy! Or rather your seat. And all around the floor… Ahem. When you can read this, thank you Bébé, mummy owes you a treat.
Anyway this is already rather verbose so to cut a long story short, it turned out Bébé FF had a virus. He proceeded to be sick repeatedly until we took him to the docteur, who looked like Marion Cotillard and he naturally flirted with her for 15 minutes and was clearly fine. So Bébé FF has now just about recovered. We all got the bug (excepting une hardcore sœur), so the weekend reunion was mostly spent in and out of the salle de bain and with a few people missing for each repas. A real dommage but a novel experience ensemble nonetheless.
Buggeryboo. Which incidentally is what Momma F calls the Jumperoo.
Be My Bébé 
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