The Phlegm of Death, Tom Hanks and Blankety Blank.

Holy. God. Above. The Baby has had her first cold.

Except I’m not going to refer to it as a cold. I’m going to refer to it as The Phlegm of Death. A little dramatic you might think? Well there a couple of facts you need to know before you jump to this conclusion:

    1)  Babies cannot sniff or blow their nose

    2) Babies are obligate nose breathers

In simple terms… it means they can’t eat. Or sleep. Or blow their nose. Or choose to breath through their mouth. Please take a second to think this through.

I imagine (and hope) that none of you have ever tried to latch on to a breast and drink milk with a blocked nose. Well let me inform you that it is traumatic for all involved. This, coupled with no sleep and you have a recipe for creating your very own Damien.

What I have found particularly interesting is how baby companies and baby media try to make baby colds sound cutesy. Let me dispel that myth for you in the following table of common phrases related to Baby Colds that are bollocks:

Term	Truth
Snuffles	Deranged piglet noises.
A bit of mucus	Some mutant form of everything-resistant mucus, with a consistency and staying power similar to cement.
Unsettled	Literally off their rocker.
‘Common’ Cold	Unsure what is ‘common’ about it. Only if your baby changing into a Satanic Mucus Limpet is common.
Your baby will need comforting	You won’t know what your baby will need. Your baby won’t know what your baby will need. If there is a God…. God doesn’t know what your baby will need.

Interestingly, The Baby is only suffering from 1x cold problem. Nasal congestion. No runny nose. No temperature. No red eyes. Just some Death Phlegm that is well and truly lodged in the attic of her nose. And although I am grateful for the lack of other symptoms…. The Phlegm of Death has nearly brought us adults just that…. Death. This is like the parenting version of Tough Guy or the Marathon des Sables. Except I genuinely think I would rather wade through ice cold water and avoid live electrical cables than endure this again.

There are two sides to it you see. The genuine torture of having to watch The Baby suffer and struggle and not be able to do anything to help. And the sheer physical and psychological pain of having less sleep than The Newborn Days.

You see, if there is a problem, I like a solution. And I like to implement that solution to solve the problem. Let me give you a little insight into the suggested solutions to The Phlegm of Death:

Suggested Solution	Truth
Raise the head of the cot by placing a pillow underneath the mattress.	Does fuck all. Except make your baby look like a slumped drunken old man and end up diagonally across the cot with head lodged between 2 cot barriers.
Sit in bathroom whilst the shower is on to produce steam.	Does fuck all. Don’t care what Margaret (48) from MumsNet says. Well actually… it dramatically increases your water bill, damages electronic devices you may be using for amusement and gives you heat stroke.
Use saline spray	Increases deranged piglet noises. Makes the Phlegm of Death laugh in your face.
Use a nasal aspirator.	Although there is nothing more romantic than the sound of your loved one attempting to suck snot out of The Baby’s nostril through a tiny tube at 4am, this also does fuck all. Except suck out the aforementioned saline spray, rendering it even more useless.
Put a few drops of vapour oil in a bowl of warm water and place on top of the radiator.	This will clear the nostrils of your window that is directly above your radiator. It will also increase your heating bill. To conclude… does fuck all.
Use a dummy with a special contraption that delivers vapor directly to The Baby’s nose.	Does fuck all. Except make The Baby look like a Mini Bane from Batman (see picture) and provide an exciting hand-grasping-toy that serves to further reduce sleeping time.

The Baby with the Vapour Dummy

Some people don’t like to taint their babies with medicine. I’m all for it. When I was pregnant, I wanted The Baby’s life to be as pure and organic as possible, free from chemicals and additives etc. Then when she developed reflux, I realized I actually wanted The Baby’s life to be as comfortable as possible.. and as quiet as possible at night… so I could sleep. Enter my good friends Gaviscon and Calpol. In all seriousness, when you have to watch your baby suffer, there’s only so far that Essence of Leaf and Extract of Compost will take you. Eventually you just need someone to give you the good stuff. Drugs. Unfortunately… there is NOTHING you can give a baby for congestion. Even the doctor looked at us with sorrowful eyes as he delivered this news. He could see the desperation in our eyes… The sleep deprivation residing in our under-eye suitcases. So as much as I wanted to inject The Baby with a pure form of Lemsip Max, there was nothing we could do.

We had no choice but to implement Survival Mode. This mode had not been used since The Newborn Days. Survival Mode involves the following:

• ·      Strictly no offensive manoeuvres (i.e. any current nap routine implementation is abandoned, cease trying to encourage new baby skills and development, do not attempt to plan any enjoyable activities for yourself)
• ·      Full retreat and assume defensive positions (i.e. only use tried and tested calm activities, sounds and movements, prepare night time battle plan, prepare mental resilience for a battering)
• ·      The single objective is SURVIVAL (i.e. eat when and what you can, sleep when and where you can, abandon unnecessary social conversation or activities, all communication is purely strategic)

Hands down, the worst part of the Phlegm of Death is the approach to bedtime. We liked to call this ‘Entering The Tunnel Of Darkness’. You don’t know how long it’s going to last, you don’t know what horrors the tunnel is going to be bring… but you know it’s going to take you to dark, dark places and you know it’s going to be long. So very long.

Here are my Top Tips for Survival:

• ·      When you are singing gentle lullabies or talking gently to your screaming baby for 4 hours in the middle of the night, try expelling your frustration and anger by adapting the words, yet maintaining the calm and gentle tone. For example instead of ‘Rock A Bye Baby on the tree tops’… try and fit in ‘Go to sleep or I’m going to throw you out of the window’ instead. For inspiration, please enjoy Samuel L Jackson’s adaptation of a familiar bedtime story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sOA_U3-HOs

• ·      Play to your strengths. The Man had far more stamina for rocking, whereas I have boobs.

• ·      Disregard any form of diet. Get snacks. Many, many snacks. At times… this will be the only source of joy that you have.

• ·      Drive up and down the A11 between the hours of 4am and 7am having only had 2 hours sleep for the last 2 nights. I would say this is the closest to death through lack of sleep I have ever felt. But The Baby slept.

• ·      Try not to get upset when you look like Tom Hanks at the end of Philadelphia. This will pass.

• ·      Try to come up with a motivational tag line whilst you are in Survival Mode. Ours was ‘Keeping it moist’ to the tune of Blankety Blank. (The doctor had told us the quickest way to get rid of the Phlegm was to keep it moist… we were Moist Masters)

• ·      Whilst walking the hundreds of miles with the pram that you inevitably will and all of your muscles hurt from being awake for so long; try to have conversation topics prepared such as ‘Times when we have felt happy’, ‘Things you’re looking forward to’ and ‘What we miss most about sleep.’

• ·      Even though you know it won’t work, use your savings to buy every single de-snuffle gadget that Boots and Mothercare sell. Sure, this may mean you have to go back to work a month earlier… but at least you got an extra 30 minutes sleep.

• ·      On a serious note…. Cuddles.

Even when The Baby did eventually go to sleep, it turned out that despite it all, I couldn’t sleep myself, because I was worried she would stop breathing or forget she could breathe through her mouth. Because like I’ve said before… she rocks my world.