Last week my lovely aunt celebrated her 70th birthday. I find it hard to believe she is 70 as that sounds old and she isn’t old but anyway. As a big celebration she hosted a party in Buxton in the Peak District. It’s a fair old way away so we broke our journey at Sudbury Hall.

We got to the hotel in Buxton in the late afternoon and settled into our room. The kids loved our big bed and watching TV while sprawled across it. So cute though!

We got the kids some tea in the bar then it was time to get ready. I went up first and would you believe there was a power cut while I was in the shower. There I am in complete darkness trying to figure out how to turn off the shower and find my towel etc. It turned out to only affect part of the hotel but that had to include our room! Still at least the kids were downstairs at the time. We got ourselves all glammed up and headed down to join the party.

The kids were so good all evening while we sat and ate even though that took them way past their bedtime.

Bedtime came and they went down to sleep very easily thankfully. Meanwhile downstairs the ceilidh started! We took it in turns with my brothers and their partners to make sure we got to have some fun on the dance floor too.

It was a really nice evening and all went well. The kids slept great and we had a fab time. Then came the drama. We went to bed and before we managed to get to sleep hubs and I both realised that LM’s breathing had changed and didn’t sound so good. Having seen both the kids with croup before, I think we knew what it was before she even woke up. But with her breathing getting more and more laboured she got fidgety and then tried to cry but couldn’t. The horrible croup bark like cough came next and that was it. Drama.

I won’t go into too much detail but hubs ended up calling an ambulance while I sat in the hallway with LM watching paw patrol on the portable dvd player trying to keep her calmwithout waking Monkey up. Crying and being upset can graduate the croup so from experience I know it is good to keep them calm. The paramedics got there quickly and by then she wasn’t too bad, but their protocol is to take under 2s with croup to hospital in case it gets worse in the night.

Unfortunately the nearest hospital was either Stockport or Macclesfield and the paramedics advised Stockport for the best paediatric A&E. So with a very heavy heart I waved off hubs and LM so I could stay at the hotel with Monkey, who remarkably had slept through it all. I tried to get a bit of sleep but it was horrible not being there with LM and knowing that they were so far away. We’d also drunk a fair amount so there was no way I could drive there.

The doctors gave LM the steroids to open her airways and after a couple of hours of observations they were allowed to come back. At 4.30am bless them. The hospital called hubs a taxi (quite an expensive one unfortunately) and they were back with us at around 5.

LM managed to get a bit of sleep back at the hotel but unfortunately Monkey was awake by now with them coming back in and though he tried he couldn’t get back to sleep again. So every time hubs or I started dozing off a little voice would pipe up with a comment or a face would appear at our bedside haha. Bless him but man we needed to sleep.

The next day LM was fine but it took a good few days for us all to catch up on our sleep and feel a bit more normal. It wasn’t exactly the end we imagined to the weekend but at least we managed to enjoy ourselves beforehand!