A plague on My House

This is sort of a continuation of this post. The things that happen when I am no longer around to run the household.

Apparently, while I was living at my mums during the difficult final months of my pregnancy, a bird fell down our chimney and was trapped behind the gas fire. HID did not know how to safely remove the fire, and asked MIL's boyfriend, who did know, to help. This was all forgotten, since no one was spending any time in the living room, and the bird sadly died. (I can assure you, this would not have happened had I been at home. The bird would have been freed as a matter of urgency. I was only told much later.)

Cut to two weeks ago. My precious newborn is just three weeks old. HID and Boy are upstairs taking a nap, and I am effectively all alone feeding the baby on the sofa. I notice a fly on the window and think nothing of it. I am not a crazy fly lady like my mum, who practically keeps fly spray in her handbag, and cannot rest until they are ALL DEAD.

Then there are three. I look at the other window and it is covered with ABOUT TWENTY flies. A large, black beastie dozily buzzes towards me from the direction of the gas fire and it dawns on me. The bird. Presumably, maggots. A nest of flies. A plague. I'm itching as I write this! Cue me turning into my mother.

Baby is deposited into her moses basket and basket covered with an oversize muslin cloth. Ransack the only locked kitchen cupboard for fly spray. Twenty minutes spent leaping around like a woman possessed after every last, dirty fly, worrying about the effect of the aerosol on my daughter's lungs and frequently wafting her around outside.

HID eventually reared his sleepy head while I was brandishing a dustpan and brush to sweep my victims from the windowsills. He was confused. I explained in a wobbly voice, not realising until then what horrors I had seen. I was suitably told off or over-exerting myself and he took over.

The next few days saw a few of the buzzy buggers exiting the chimney in dribs and drabs, despite HID spraying half a can of poison into the hole daily and me nagging him to "sort it out". The best place to breastfeed is on the sofa, next to the fire, so HID set up the hoover next to me (fly spray within reach of me is also within reach of Boy) and much to the bemusement of Boy, Missis and visitors, I zapped the little buzzers into the belly of the hoover as soon as they crawled, wingless and deformed (from all the spray) out of the fireplace. I was the craziest fly lady of them all!!

This was going to be written as a quite light-hearted post, after all, it was over now, and no body got hurt right?

Three days after the initial plague, HID, MIL and her boyfriend were sitting at the table in our open-plan downstairs room eating tea (evening meal to you southerners) while I sat on the sofa eating one-handed, feeding Missis. She was fidgety, and I asked HID to swaddle her for me. He laid her on the rug and wrapped her up. When he picked her up I bolted for the door, there was a huge black fly on her blanket! I shouted at him to get it off but he couldn't see where. I looked to tell him, very panicked now, and saw it was CRAWLING THROUGH HER PERFECT RED HAIR. I jumped around on the spot screeching "it's in her hair!" repeatedly. And then it as ON HER FACE. My perfect newborn baby had a disease-ridden, fat, black fly, that had been crawling around on a rotting bird's carcus (that had been dead for at least three weeks) crawling allover her perfect newborn skin.

I was crazy before, now I just lost it. I was crying, shaking, screaming, hyperventilating; FREAKING OUT. At this point, MIL helpfully said "calm down". If I could have gotten away with murder, she'd have been buried in the back garden that very night. How exactly would she have reacted if it had been her new baby?? Thank god it was not me holding her at the time, I may well have dropped her.

HID stepped up, crushed the fly, rushed Missis into the kitchen and bathed her in the sink. Helped me sit down, brought me rescue remedy and encouraged me to eat my tea. I had lost my appetite somewhat, so I was sent upstairs to feed baby while the men FINALLY removed the bird and the flies. This is the sort of thing that happens when I am not in charge of running the household. MIL leaves next week. *audible sigh of relief* she has also just walked in on me using my breast pump. Again. *scream!*s

Also, while you're reading check out this post for info on how to do your good deed for the day, boost your good karma, and VOTE for my friends Faye & Liam to win their dream wedding!!