Joe's first readmission

I was aiming to get through the rest of the year without a re-admissions to hospital. Alas, Joe let the side down on Friday after having a perforated eardrum so we were admitted overnight so they could monitor him.

Amazingly he was absolutely fine - no pain, no fever, no excessive crying etc. Typically we were 3 hours away from home, visiting our friends Karen and Chris who also have twins, when I first noticed something was wrong. I took him out of his carseat and he had yucky green pus coming from his ear. I wasn't too concerned as he was so happy and smiley and just thought he maybe had a bit of an ear infection and I'd stop off at the hospital on the way home and get his some antibiotics to clear it up.

David rang the hospital to let them know I'd be going down in a couple of hours. They scared me by saying a pussy ear could be very dangerous in such a small baby and the infection could quickly spread around his body making him very sick and posioning his blood! To add to my panic the three hour journey turned into nearly 5 hours due to an accident.

Upon arrival at the hospital we were given our own room and told to make ourselves comfortable. The dr who initially assessed Joe thought that the chances were that he'd need IV antibiotics to prevent the infection spreading and therefore a few days stay in hospital. Luckily the senior dr on duty is an ENT specialist and decided that as long as he remained clinically stable overnight, without spiking a temperature then oral antibiotics would be okay as a preventative measure, but in actual fact, because the eardrum had perforated and was draining then he'd probably be fine without any intervention at all.

Everyone was amazed that he wasn't in, and hadn't been in any extreme pain. We were discharged on Saturday afternoon and has been his usual cheery self throughout it all. I wish I was as cheery when I got back to the car and found a £70 parking ticket for my troubles. After a night in a chair with no sleep, nothing to eat or drink in nearly a day and missing out on an afternoon planned with our friends Gaby and Dai and their little treasure William, it just about rounded the day off nicely.