The horrors of Mastitis

A few days ago, I woke up in the morning feeling achey all over. I realised I felt like I had the flu. Then, I realised my right breast hurt like hell. What followed then was, in fact, two days of complete hell.

When I read about Mastitis, I thought it was just a painful boob. But no - it affected my whole being. I had the shivers, the sweats, exhaustion, raging fever, and, finally, vomiting. Added to this, my husband was flying for part of the time, and trying to look after our 9 month old baby (who can now crawl!) whilst feeling at death's door was almost impossible. But, as they say, you cope because you have to.

I'm now feeling a lot better, thanks to some very strong antibiotics and painkillers. It was my first experience of feeling very ill indeed since becoming a Mummy, and it was really, really hard. I know I'm not the first woman to go through it, but cripes, it was nasty.

The expat family trap

We're now back home in the sandpit after a lovely long break in the UK. It was a real tonic to see some snow, some ice, and yes, even a bit of rain (although I have to say we're rather glad to be back in the land of blue sky again - there's only so much cold weather you can enjoy!) And of course it was also very special spending Christmas with our families.

But having said that...

...It's absolutely incredible how difficult it can be staying with your family for long periods of time!

I've come to the conclusion that it's an inevitable part of the expat experience that your family becomes a thorny issue. After all, you can't just drive to see them for a weekend - the only chance you have is during either annual leave or during a visit they make to see you. Either option is very full-on - there are no half-measures. This means you spend all day, every day together, and obviously this isn't always going to work. In our case, both our families are hard to deal with for extended periods of time. Add to this our son, who is now officially everyone's favourite family member, and you get a difficult cocktail. Everyone wants to see our son for as long as possible.

For example - on our recent trip, we spent a week with my parents and a week with my husband's father. For our third week, we went to stay in a cottage in Cornwall for some very crucial time for just the three of us. Half-way through the week, my Mum rang us up and basically demanded that we should end that holiday early so that we could spend an extra night with them before we flew off from Heathrow. An extra night, that is, on top of the night we were already planning to spend with them before we left. I refused, saying that despite loving her and my Dad very much, our holiday time was precious too. She was pretty grumpy about it, but accepted it. It was just an upset we could have done without.

It's a very difficult issue from all sides. Obviously we want to see our families. We love them, and we miss them. But we also want some holidays to ourselves, and more to the point, to places other than the UK! Talking of which, we're off for a week in the sun together in March. We can't wait...

I wonder if any other expats out there are having a similar experience?

Clearly cheating pilots are an internet obsession

Today, I published the 50th comment on this post, which I wrote in January two years ago. In it, I put forward my by now rather well rehearsed treatise on why you can't tar all pilots with the same brush, and that, crucially, ALL PILOTS DO NOT CHEAT.

Little did I know how popular it would be. It's clearly very Googleable (is that a word now? Probably.) Stats show it's my most visited post ever. The 50 comments that follow are an interesting read. They're by no means all the comments I've received - I've rejected ones that named specific people, for example, because I felt that wasn't fair, and there's one particular correspondent who keeps sending in rather illiterate rants about female Cabin Crew which, by and large, I reject.

Still, it's fascinating that it's taken on a life of its own. The internet is indeed an interesting place...