Within two weeks of being referred by our GP Gracie was seen by the consultant at our local hospital. We explained that when Gracie was hurt or upset she couldn’t catch her breath, stopped breathing and fainted. We were sent for an ECG just to check that her heart wasn’t doing anything to cause this. Everyone at the hospital was so brilliant with Gracie, when the nurse attached the wires to Gracie’s chest she pretended that they were octopus legs, which really put Gracie at ease. We hardly had to wait around at all. The doctor said that she was sure this was a classic case of breath holding, a fairly common condition which most children grow out of by the time they start school. Usually when I see that Gracie isn’t breathing, I cuddle her to comfort her, the doctor explained that this is the wrong thing to do – I need to lay her flat on the floor until she comes around so that the blood can get to her brain more quickly. In the event that she doesn’t start breathing within a minute I need to call an ambulance but this is very unlikely.

Gracie was relaxed and happy at the hospital. We have a doctors and nurses play kit at home, which we quite often play with. I think that this definitely helped and we talked to Gracie about this at the hospital. Mark and I feel much happier now. Gracie has held her breath once since our hospital visit, but I was able to handle it calmly and she recovered quickly. I am so grateful that there is nothing seriously wrong even if the turns are scary!

In more cheerful news we are starting to prepare for Christmas. Gracie doesn’t understand why she can only have one chocolate out of her advent calendar each day but we are getting there. I only allow the girls to open their calendars when they are dressed and ready to leave for school – it’s amazing how much quicker they go when there is chocolate on offer! This week we made our Christmas cake. The girls loved being involved, and we each took a turn to stir in a Christmas wish. Take a look at the pictures of the girls baking.   

My little chefs helping out with the Christmas cake :

Gracie is sweet, quiet, loves her food, dollies and her Nana. She is my delicate flower. A year ago, soon after Sonny was born she had her first ‘funny turn’. Nana was leaving to go home and Gracie got so upset that she just couldn’t get her breath and fell to the floor as white as a ghost. She came round very quickly but was dazed, didn’t really focus and was very pale. We called an ambulance, which arrived within a minute. The paramedic said that although she didn’t seem in any immediate danger we should take her straight to A&E (it was an ambulance first response car, which don’t have child seats so it was safer for us to take her). The hospital was fantastic, we were seen immediately and Gracie was checked over. She was given the all-clear but no real diagnosis – it may have been breath holding or a fit but we would know if it happened again.

A couple of months later Gracie fell over and hurt herself. She ran towards me but as she was running I could see that she wasn’t taking a breath. By the time I got to her she had stopped breathing, rolled her eyes and was limp. I ran with her to the front door to get cold air on her and she came round. It is the scariest thing to hold your limp child in your arms not knowing if she is going to come round. It takes me a long time after to get the image of her pale face and the feeling of her limp body from my head. It did seem as though she was holding her breath. I phoned my husband and explained. He hadn’t seen the first incident either so he calmed me down but brushed it off.

The third time was when Mark was cleaning Gracie’s teeth. Again she was very upset and the same thing happened. Mark freaked. He hadn’t understood how scary it was.

We thought she would grow out of breath holding and had been through a period where it hadn’t occurred – we thought it was over. This month, however, she has passed out twice, enough is enough we thought so took her straight to the GP. He thinks she may have a form of epilepsy but we have been referred to the hospital for tests. I haven’t written about this before because it is always such an awful experience. I really didn’t want to write it down or even acknowledge that something may be wrong with my beautiful, perfect girl. I am so relieved that she is going to be checked out – her appointment is in a couple of weeks.

We have had so much fun this week with Halloween activities – here is a photo of Gracie and Alicia in their outfits!

Gracie in Alicia in their Halloween outfits:

After the birth of each child my hair has fallen out in clumps. My hairdresser says this is fairly common. I seem to lose a lot but it never looks patchy or thinning. To be honest it doesn’t bother me too much when it is falling out… apart from having to pull it out of the plug hole – my worst job! The worst part is when it starts to grow back. I now have about an inch of fluff around my hairline which unless blow dried down looks completely ridiculous. I feel a little like Mr Majeika – remember him? He was a wizard who wiggled his wild tufty grey hair. No longer can I get away with washing my hair every two, more often three, days and scraping it back into a pony tail – I now have to blow dry the fluff down. Worse still, this time around, some of it is grey!!!!!

Almost as soon as Alicia’s chicken pox started to clear up Gracie came out with them. Alicia was so proud of herself for ‘sharing’ them with her sister. In a way I’m glad that the girls have got them out of the way – on the other hand I’m ready for a week when everyone is well again as I feel exhausted. Gracie was very proud of her spots; we made a great game out of showing her belly and counting them all. For a couple of days she was up in the night with a temperature and was very clingy during the day. It was quite a struggle to put her down when I needed to feed or change Sonny. Now a week later she is back to normal, just a little spotty.

Sonny had his last set of baby jabs this week. I was more upset than he was – even though I know that the jabs will prevent him from getting nasty illnesses I still don’t like taking him to be hurt with a needle. I shouldn’t have worried as he made a small whimper then flashed a smile at the nurse – he’s such a flirt! He didn’t suffer at all afterwards and that’s it now until his MMR at 13 months or so.

We have a great relationship with our GP. We have been with the surgery since we moved into the area seven years ago so the Doctor has known us for a long time, and has been there at every step with the pregnancies and growing kids. I feel that I can go to him with any little concern that I have about the children, which is so important because with three of them, there seems to always be something to worry about. I’d spoken to my health visitor in October about Gracie’s speech. She doesn’t seem to be saying as much as she should for her age, although she can certainly hear well and understands everything I say. The health visitor suggested I wait until Christmas and if there was no improvement I should make an appointment with the GP. I took her this week and he agreed that she probably should be seen by a paediatrician. Although he doesn’t think there is anything to worry about, he does feel she should be referred. The waiting lists aren’t too long so we should have an appointment in about a month’s time.

Last week Mark told Alicia that Nanny Laura had passed away and had gone to live with the angels. We had been preparing her for a while by telling her that Nanny was very poorly so that it wasn’t a shock. She said that she understood and then went back to playing with her toys. A couple of days later she said ‘Nanny Laura has died hasn’t she Mummy’, and later when I said that Daddy was at Nanny Laura’s house she just said ‘silly Mummy, Nanny Laura doesn’t live there any more, she is with the angels’. It definitely helped that we didn’t show her how upset we were, and also that we waited to tell her until we had dealt with it.

Alicia has had the chicken pox. There were no symptoms other than a few spots so I wasn’t sure to begin with whether she had it or not. After two days she was covered in blisters – definitely the chicken pox! I have had to keep her home from pre-school and also away from the pregnant ladies I know. My sister was due to visit at the weekend for my birthday party but as she is pregnant we had to wait to make sure that the blisters had scabbed over before she could come. Luckily they had by the day of the party.

The party went well – I am now 30! I have been so excited about this birthday and wanted to celebrate in style. We had a champagne, canapés and cupcakes party at the house. The kids are always in bed by 7, which gave us 30 minutes to dress and prepare before our guests arrived. We let Alicia stay up for a little while to see everyone but she was still in bed by 8, giving me a chance to be Emma rather than Mum for a change. Sonny won’t take a bottle, even if filled with expressed milk, so I couldn’t go wild with the champagne although I did have one glass to celebrate… 

With everyone fit and well again, and a bit of free time before my party we had the opportunity to have our first play around with the video camera.