There's no fever as high as a man's fever...

THEY say kids are petri dishes for germs and that they turn your house into a living, breathing cess pit for all sorts of vileness over the winter months. This time last year, I’d have said the same – Maisie was being cared for outside the home for the first time since she was born and seemed to bring every bug going back to our gaff for shits and giggles. Literally. Shits more often than giggles though, as there’s nothing funny about diarrhoea. This year, however (and I may be jinxing myself here so I’m frantically touching wood between types) we seem to have escaped the school and pre-school germs. I mean of course there have been sniffles. But nothing that we can’t handle and versus last winter’s six vomiting bugs, we feel like we’re on the pigs back. 

There has been a bigger culprit this year though. And I think man germs may be worse than all the baby germs combined. Seriously. My other half has had two bouts of the winter vomiting bug and now he’s struggling with man flu. He passed one of his vomiting bugs onto the rest of us but of course no one suffered as much as he did. I’m sure any other women out there can relate: there’s no fever as high as a man’s fever, no vomit as projectile as the one that comes from a man’s gob. There’s no stomach cramp as agonising than the one in a man’s belly, no headache as achey, no nose as runny. The poor men…Last night himself retreated to the bed at 9.30, leaving me the remote and a room full of blissful silence. He seems better today but I have a feeling he’ll be struck down again later this evening, when the kitchen needs tidying after dinner maybe. The poor fellow. That man flu always strikes at the worst time.