Green Paint

Our daughter was around one year old at the time, she had been constipated for a couple of days, which we had put down to her just starting nursery and being a little out of sorts.

When she eventually went to the toilet, it came out bright green, my wife panicked, so we rushed off to the local A&E with the nappy in tow. We waited in casualty for a couple of hours before being seen by one of the doctors.

When we explained what the problem was, the doctor smiled at us and asked if she had been painting recently. My wife and I looked at each other, not with us, we said and this is when the penny dropped. Our daughter had come back from nursery with a bright green picture a couple of days previously.

On checking with the nursery if our daughter could have eaten the paint, her key worker  replied “oh yes! We couldn’t stop her putting the brush in her mouth, but it is perfectly safe!” She stated this in such a matter of fact fashion, as if it were the norm, I couldn’t believe it!

Then when we told her what had happened, and the fact that we had wasted most of Saturday afternoon in A&E, it was all she could do to stop her self cracking up in front of us. I could have throttled her…………. Oh well at least someone found it funny, and looking back my wife and I can smile to ourselves about it, but it gave us a scare at the time.

Roger from Brighton

The Disaster

Picture the scene, our son had been in this world for about a month, we had some family coming over for dinner, and my wife wanted to pop to the local shops. She did not want to take the baby with her and asked if I would be ok looking after him while she went out. “Sure” I said. Now, this was the first time that I had been in charge of our son without my wife being in the house, but how difficult could it be, I thought to myself!

I kissed my wife goodbye, put on the TV and sat down with my boy on my lap. Within a couple of minutes however, he had projectile vomited all over himself and me, yuk!!!!!

I ran him up the stairs to get him changed, I stripped him off, pulled off my soiled T-shirt and used it to mop him up. In the time it took me to turn around and grab a nappy he had crapped himself - a runny mess
that was everywhere. Great, I thought, could it get any worse???

Of course it could........ as I was leaning over him to start cleaning him up, “psssssssst “, he starts to pee all over my trousers, so off they had to come too. Who would have guessed that such a small thing could
contain so much liquid, or be able to propel it so far.

There was nothing else for it, he had to have a bath. I put the baby bath on top of the big bath, filled it with water and popped him in.

I was successfully removing the mess and starting to congratulate myself on a job well done, when the bath gave way and fell. Thankfully, I was holding my boy under the shoulders and he did not go with it.
However, that did not stop the water in his bath absolutely drenching me and the crashing noise starting one of those silent yells that then goes straight into a high pitched screech with a full flood of tears to match.

Just then the front door opened and my wife was presented with the sight of me at the top of the stairs in just my boxers and socks, dripping with water and with a howling baby in my arms. Never leave
me with him again I cried as she burst out laughing, she had only been gone 15 minutes!!!!!!

James from Ashford

Taking my five month old on holiday for the first time

Being the eternally well organised one, my wife had arranged in advance that we would have seats at the front of the cabin with the baby table that folds down so that you can strap your baby in to a moses basket- type thing. However on arrival at the airport we were informed by the check in assistant that she was really sorry but they had given our seat to another couple by mistake and that there was nothing that they could do about it. This, of course, had my hormonal post pregnancy wife in tears. After a heated debate with the assistant, she agreed that she would give us three seats instead of two, and this calmed my wives tears for a while.

After boarding the plane for our 10 hour flight we discovered that it had fixed arm rests and so having three seats was not that much of a help as we couldn’t lie our son down anyway. This again had my wife sobbing, so with an “it will be alright” and a “don’t worry, I’ll take care of the baby” or similar consolation, we settled in for the duration of the flight.

Shortly after take-off it was time for my son to have a feed and, as I had said I would take care of him, this fell to me. The feed went well, but during the process of burping him, I don’t know if it was the turbulence or he was just out of sorts, but he projectile vomited the entire contents of his stomach into my lap. This then pooled into the seat of the chair and by the time I had handed him over to my wife and got up, I was thoroughly soaked through with the stuff front and back.

I cleaned the chair up as best I could, and then took my son through to the bathroom to clean the pair of us up. I stripped my son’s all-in-one off and discovered much to my annoyance that he had a little present for me in his nappy. Great…but this was an airplane toilet and, apart from the toilet seat and a small 6 inch shelf, there were, as far as I could see, no surfaces. So in my infinite wisdom I took off my t-shirt to use as a mat on the toilet seat while I changed him.

So he is stripped and cleaned and as I turn to put his nappy in the bin, I feel a warm wet sensation on my leg. Bloody hell…he has just peed all over me ……and my t-shirt.

As I came back from the bathroom I could see my wife looking at me with a worried expression. However, as I relayed my story to her, she was in fits of giggles (at least this was better than the tears). In between laughter she informed me that there was a foldaway baby table above the toilet that I had obviously completely missed.

I now had another 9 hours of the flight to go in damp smelly clothes. However that extra seat did come in useful after all!!!!

As you would expect, by the time we arrived at our destination I absolutely reeked and couldn’t wait to get to the hotel for a shower and a change of clothes.

Tony From Cambridge

First trip out of Terminal 5

We had booked tickets with BA for my wife and I to fly to Scotland with our 6 week old and 2 year old boys for a long weekend. Unfortunately for us terminal 5 had been open for less than a week and still had loads of problems with baggage going missing, cancelations and lots of delays. So you can understand that my wife and I were a little concerned. We packed as much as we could into the hand luggage and only took a small case of stuff to go in the hold.

Terminal 5 itself seemed to be ½ finished and there were people still getting to grips with all of the new systems, one of which is for every passenger to be photographed when going through security. This took the guy about 15 mins to do the 4 of us, including the baby. Unfortunately he kept having to call over his supervisor to help him out as this his was his first time using the system.

As expected there was a lengthy delay on the flight going out, however there was some amusing banter from the pilot, who had obviously had enough of the fiasco as everybody else. When we landed his parting shot over the intercom was “Sorry for the hour and half delay, there was absolutely no good reason for it, please direct any complaints you have to " This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ” at this the whole plane erupted in laughter and everybody departed in good humour. To our surprise and delight even our luggage had also managed to travel with us and duly turned up on the conveyor belt.

We had a great 4 days away with the boys, long walks during the day, and a few whiskeys in the evenings, then came the trip home……..

We had an hour delay leaving the airport as the inbound flight was delayed from Heathrow. The flight itself went smoothly enough and as we touched down the pilot had managed claw back 15 mins from the earlier delay. However we were now stuck at T5 with nowhere for the plane to go, another ½ an hour went by before we were finally able to leave the plane.

Now we enter the baggage hall, which looks like a suit case grave yard, they were packed up against the walls in trolleys. Stupidly I looked at one of the tags, and the flight was from the day before…….this was not looking good!!

We waited around 45 mins, repeatedly checking the board to see which belt the baggage was going to come up on. However it was still saying wait in baggage hall, when my eagle eyed wife spotted a suit case that looked like ours revolving around on one of the belts on the far side of the room. Lo and behold there is was, no wonder stuff was going missing they could not even get the info in the baggage hall correct. I’ve no idea how long it had been going around and around for, but we had it now and we set off to the car pleased as punch.

The luggage is in the kids are packed and we are ready to go………..turn the key…… and nothing, the car doesn’t even turn over. I checked we hadn’t left the lights on or anything like that, everything seems as it should be. By this point the kids are started to play up so I turned around in the seat to check on them and notice a dim orange glow emanating from the overhead light, and it suddenly dawns on me that the two year old had helpfully flicked the switch on the light on his way out of the car 4 days ago. Defiantly a flat battery then, so I leave my wife feeding the baby and head off to see if I can find someone with some jump leads, after speaking to some thoroughly unhelpful member of staff in the car park, I am informed I will have to phone the AA.

So an hour later a man in a yellow van turns up, we pop the bonnet hook up the battery and she fires up on the first attempt……at last we are on the home stretch.

We eventually got home 7 and a 1/2 hours after we set off, thoroughly stressed and promising each other that next time we will drive, as it will be definitely be quicker.

Jason from Woking