You brought it up...

A note of warning for the weak-stomached: includes descriptions of bodily functions.

(BTW, W is my wife, T is our daughter)

My wife and I had had our first weekend away planned since the birth of T, but on Thursday morning T woke tossing and turning and got sick in our bed. First time she's ever properly retched. She was very upset. For the next few days she was sensitive and wanted only to lie around and cuddle, highly unusual for her.

By Saturday she was back to normal but we didn't want to leave her, so on Sunday morning W's folks headed off for 2 days in Ely in our stead.

Sunday afternoon, while we were on a little walk, W started feeling unwell. By 6pm she had deteriorated and brought up most of the day's food. From then on and for most of the night, she couldn't stand without nearly collapsing, was feverish with chills, vomiting several times.

I was fine, no sign of illness at all. Norovirus seemed possible but unlikely as we'd not knowingly had contact with it, and because if it had come from T, then both of us - W and I - should have caught it simultaneously. W suspected the vegan burgers we'd had at lunch because it was all she could taste and smell, but unlikely because I'd had the second patty in the pack, the pack had been sealed, in the fridge, and was within its use-by date. Another possible suspect was eggs - we'd had scrambled eggs that I had made with oat milk instead of the dairy (for no reason other than that we had little dairy left, but thank dog I did as you'll see). The eggs had been a few days past their best-before date, but that's normally fine, and I had smelled each one and nothing unusual. Also, all of us had had full helpings of the eggs. So, milk was the final suspect. We get ours from a local eco market from a local organic farm, and it may have been contaminated or our bottle not entirely clean. I had been in the habit of rinsing with boiling water as well as running the bottles through the dishwasher, but the last few refills I'd skipped the boiled-water rinse.

By that evening, W was out for the count, but T was bouncing around, no illness, and went to sleep happily.

So, being of a haphazard and inconsequentially scientific bent, at about 8:30pm on Sunday evening I tested the milk: it smelled completely fine, so I drank a small amount of it: about a quarter of a glass, not much more than you'd put in tea. Tasted fine, creamy, delicious as usual.

At 4am on the next morning, Monday, I woke feeling strange and went to the toilet. For the next few hours I deteriorated, mainly diarrhoea and feeling like part of a compost heap.

We woke early on the Monday morning, as is T's wont. I was still feeling a lot better than Li, and had not brought anything up, but then in one fell swoop I completely outclassed her vomiting. About 7am I went from feeling more or less ok to having a tingling sensation in my limbs, lightheadedness, feeling like death warmed up. It dawned on me some seconds too late that I needed to be sick. I ran to the toilet but I didn't quite make it: my single full-body explosion of vomit outdid anything W had managed. All hers had been neatly in the toilet bowl.

A matter of some scientific interest is that in both of our first vomits were undigested mushrooms from our Sunday brunch. The egg and beans were no longer visually discernable but a few slices of mushroom were there, whole and unmistakeable. They'd survived in my case for almost 24 hours in the gastric juices resisting my body's determined effort to assimilate them.

That was to be my only vomit. The rest of the day was grim, chills and troubled sleep, and feeling very guilty about lying around and having T just watch TV and read.

Meanwhile, W's parents had returned to look after T. You should have seen the look and squeals of glee when T saw she was being rescued by nana and grandpa from the boring grimness of our slovenly sickness.
 

W and I slept for the rest of the Monday. The sleep was fitful but constant. In the evening we roused ourselves long enough to make mashed potato and watch some TV. W's appetite was back. I could barely face a few spoonfuls of potato but Greek yoghurt with honey, for some reason, was delicious. Then back to bed.

Slept then solidly another 9 hours... and now, this morning awoke feeling completely healed.

The shock of this for us is how suddenly we were both rendered almost completely helpless despite not having travelled, taken no risk with out-of-date food, and left nothing out of the fridge. If I'd been hit as hard as W, we would have had real trouble looking after our daughter. How must this be as a single parent??