Well yesterday’s post (the Secret Weapon, by the way, was about to be revealed as a baby sling.  Regrettably it turned out not to be such a vote-winner later that evening, when Piglet bawled non-stop for ten minutes in it, and I took it off, thinking maybe it was too tight and crushing his little testicles) pretty much sums it up.  You start doing something productive; cooking, eating, drinking a cup of tea, writing this blog, sleeping…and immediately Piglet starts screaming and whatever necessary life task one happens to be engaged in is abandoned, never to be returned to, whilst all one’s energy is taken up with trying to halt the bawling.

Last night it got so bad that my mother, who had sworn that she would be sleeping tonight and I would have to cope with Piglet’s squealing alone, burst into the room and announced that his persistent crying was not normal and I should phone NHS Direct.  This then led to a 1am dash across Bristol to the only walk-in centre that was still open, in order to get him checked out by a nurse who pronounced him “colicky,” which was exactly the diagnosis my mother had already made (I had gone for “acid reflux,” but the nurse reassured me that this was not the case).  The good news (other than that Piglet was not, as my mother seemed to have feared, dying) was that when we finally returned, he actually went to sleep.  Hallelujah.

Give that this was the fourth time THIS WEEK that Piglet and I have accessed the services of the NHS in one form or another, I think we can now safely say that for probably the first time ever, I am definitely seeing a good return on all the tax I’ve paid.