Traffic light hats

Despite weighing in at a healthy 9lb 4oz when he was born, baby Max spent his first 3 days in the Neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Rosie hospital in Cambridge.  He was really quite poorly but with excellent round the clock care he quickly progressed through the unit and was soon back in a cot next to his mum.

It's impossible to find a way to properly thank those nurses and doctors who supervised his care in there but I may have found a small way to express our gratitude using my 'crafty' interests.  Apparently, when a baby is first born, their level of risk is indicted by the colour hat they are given.  Using a traffic light pattern, high risk babies have a red hat, medium risk have yellow/orange and low risk have green.  Obviously there are many other measures in place, but this is an easy visual guide.  But because of the risk of infection, the hats can only be worn once so the hospital needs a steady supply of hats to cope with turn over.

The timing couldn't have been better as I had no crafty project on the go, so I popped into town and bought a ball of each colour wool.

What a week we have had in Deb's World.  I honestly need something nice and relaxing to do.  I have spent the week pulled in so many directions.

To cut a very long story short, Mother in law has been really quite poorly this week and much time has been spent on the phone to her doctors who seemed quite happy to diagnose  over the phone that the pain in her hip was arthritis (which we already knew) and tell us to make sure she took her paracetamol.  

On Wednesday we had a call at 6pm to say she had fallen and couldn't get up.  Another dash to her house where she was adamant she wasn't going to hospital or coming back to us and all that could be done was tuck her up in bed with a hot wheat bag and painkillers.  Thursday the doctor agreed to visit and found that she has a bad water infection and needed heavy duty antibiotics.  Another trip over to hers in the afternoon to check up on her.  

In the meantime, we had Leo and Rosie for 3 days as the childminder is still on holiday - happy to report the fluffy Mingo blanket is working its dreamy magic.

And Coco has taken to hiding outside to avoid little baby fingers.  Rosie couldn't quite understand how she could see Coco but couldn't actually touch her.

Unbeknown to M-I-L, Paul had to go into hospital on Friday afternoon for gastroscopy and colonoscopy - which is why we needed her to be better enough to not need a daily visit by then!  So I've gone from babysitting to husband-sitting for 24 hours while he rests and recuperates.  Only to get a call at 7am this morning from Rachel to say that Leo had woken with a horribly swollen eye and in pain.  Her husband had already had to go into work for some particular weekend project so I had to have Rosie again while she took Leo to A&E where they have diagnosed cellulitis of the eyelid.  Poor little boy, no wonder he's in so much pain.  Who knew you could get cellulitis there?  So antibiotics for him too!

I don't like to say it out loud for fear that fate will throw some other obstacle in the way but my plan for this evening is for a nice gin and tonic while watching Strictly Come Dancing and doing a bit of knitting.  Wish me luck!