Isolation

If you'd said to us at Christmas where we'd be at today I don't think any of us would have believed it.

In the space of a few weeks so much has changed.

Coronavirus was on my radar and worrying me a little bit before it was on most people's. Any respiratory virus is an issue for William and the reports coming from China weren't good. I then started closely following what was happening in Italy via Twitter and I knew we were in trouble. We started socially distancing nearly two weeks ago, gradually reducing what we were doing to protect William. We then withdrew William from school from Monday and Eliza the following day as the government's response ramped up. 

Along with many other families like ours we have gone into strict isolation for three reasons:

1. We don't want William to get it. There's virtually no evidence on what his chances would be of surviving it. There's a good chance it would kill him and a higher chance he'd need intensive care treatment. It's very likely we won't have enough ICU beds to treat everyone and we will have to prioritise who to treat. William will not be high up on the list. I imagine the only thing in his favour is he's a child.
2. We don't want William to catch anything that might risk landing him in hospital (which is not uncommon for him with any respiratory illness). We need to keep him away and protected and avoid the risk of him needing any intensive care. 
3. We need to prevent Steve and I from getting it. William needs complex medical care throughout the day and parts of the night. There's only a small number of people able to provide that. If one of us caught it and went into isolation within part of the house it would be impossible for the other one of us to care for the children and the one of us who was ill. 

We went into this knowing we had at least three months of isolation ahead, trying to care for three very different children with very different needs while Steve tries to work full time from home. It's looking increasingly likely this will be for longer than three months. We are trying to make difficult decisions about care and respite and balancing our need for help and a break with the need to keep William safe.

We're on day 3 now of official isolation. I want to try and blog my way through it as a record of this unprecedented time. Some days I'm hoping it'll be funny. Some days it'll hopefully give you an insight into isolating as a family around a medically complex child. Some days it'll be reflective and thoughtful. Some days it'll just be something for me to do!

So a summary of our first three days....we kicked off day 1 with Eliza upset that Cecily was drinking from her bottle. She told me Cecily would get her germs. What germs are they then, I asked. Coronavirus of course. She quickly back tracked when I told her she'd better move out then!

Thankfully Eliza is currently thrilled to have enrolled at a "new school"! She insists on calling me "teacher" despite me telling her "mum" will suffice. She has created peg pictures for the three of them and insists on hanging coats on the shoe cupboard (despite us having perfectly good coat hooks in the cupboard).

We're keeping it all quite casual trying to make sure William gets some physio each day and Eliza does something learning-y and not just watch Shimmer and Shine all day long. This has been relatively easy while her enthusiasm is high! I'm trying to enforce "playtime" each day where the girls go out in the garden for a while so me and William can enjoy some peace and quiet! Some warmer weather would be very welcome!

Some lovely teacher friends have sent me some ideas and resources and I've joined a couple of websites for free print outs which is providing plenty for Eliza to do. I also joined a bunch of covid homeschooling facebook groups in my enthusiasm but have quickly unfollowed them all because it's information overload. Also, most people aren't try to homeschool while caring for a child like William, so I'm just going with the flow!

Tomorrow we're hoping to set up a snack shop to stop Eliza eating the entire snack contents of the house! (Why do they want endless snacks but never want to eat their actual meals?!)

If you are not in the vulnerable category and are able to get out and about and are local then please shout if you're able to help with our food shopping. Hopefully once the shops settle down it'll be much easier to shop online again. If you want to drop us a letter or chocolate bar through the door feel free! It's lovely to have contact with people that isn't just online. I'll post specific prayer requests as we go for those who want to be praying for us.

For now here's some highlights of our first three days! Obviously this is the internet so I am only posting the photos that make it look like we've had the most wonderful three days ever and the children have all been absolute angels. I decided it was best to leave out details of the 30 nappies we've changed in that time, the horrendous nappy rash C has, C's "delightful" new way of communicating to us (more on that to come), when C got her head stuck in William's chair, when we discovered C wondering around with an unlidded navy felt tip pen.... and the 5 million hours I've spent trying to put William's gaiters on!

 

Cosmic yoga!

Sensory story time 

School corner!