Uh oh, da toofbrush gone DOWN. Dond stick your hand Mummy. No no!

The last few days have been a bit of a roller-coaster of ups and downs.

Yesterday I attended a memorial service for Baby Pat who died following his Norwood surgery. He was 13 days old. I did not know Pat and Pui well but they had attended our local CHD support group before he was born and they seem to be lovely and loving people who were gentle parents to Pat. They had a hard path in Pat's short life but handled his death with grace and wisdom. I know it is not right to expect people to cope with the passing of a child in any particular way but in our society we are so insulated from dying that it is important and significant when a family lets you see it is the part of life that it is and come through it.

After the memorial a few of us from the support group gathered and Anita mentioned that when Gabe was younger (he is 18 now with a single ventricle) it was far more common for babies to die from their CHDs. As a parent of a child who is in the 'new' generation of babies with complex heart problems I feel a deep sense of respect and compassion for those who went before and watched their children suffer and struggle with the field of pediatric heart surgery in its infancy. I know that we have a long way to go but Baby Pat is the first little one I have known and 'lost' from a family in our support group. I wish it could have been different.

Other sad news
On Sunday morning I received an email to our support group with the devastating news that Linda's husband had died overnight of a massive heart attack. He was 52. Linda has two little girls one of whom (Gabby) has a complex heart defect. The awful thing is that my first thought was about life insurance not the emotional implications of your husband dying. Josh says that I think of him as Mr Moneybags so it is probably time to get a job. I should tell him that he is Mr YOUNG Moneybags which was my secret plan in marrying him - get some good years out of him while he can still get up off the couch.

Anyway, I shouldn't enter this tone of levity because I am still just shocked and not sure what you can do to help someone with such a momentous loss and life change. I shall ask.

Now, the humor
Potty training is going well and those from the British gene pool can always make a joke out of bottoms and toilets. Wren is very keen on potty-training. When he needs to pee or poop he says he has a 'hot tummy' or 'need pee NOW' and we try the potty. After a few 'tries' he has results and always says "so PROUD" which is what I said the first time he used it. After that we pour the contents of the potty down the toilet, I rinse out the potty and dump the water in the toilet and Wren gets to flush.

Yesterday Wren was waiting to flush the toilet while I rinsed the potty but he jumped the gun a bit and flushed early. While he was flushing he was holding a kids toothbrush Frost had been given as a freebie somewhere. It had a red flashing light on the handle and a bubble of water with fish in it.

"Uh oh" said Wren, peering at the receding vortex in the toilet bowl "da toofbrush gone DOWN."
"What?" I screeched. Turning around and spilling potty water on the floor. I joined Wren in peering into the toilet but it was empty. Clean. White. Empty.
"It come back up?" Wren said, hopefully. Ever since he saw poop get stuck once and need plunging he has had a theory that stuff in the toilet may come back up at any time.
"No," I said looking closer for any sign of a toothbrush. "Its gone."
At that point Wren read my mind that i should stick my hand IN to see if I could feel it stuck there. Of course, he didn't read track two which was simultaneously saying "F*ck. What is Joshua going to say about THIS disaster. He just loves expensive plumbing emergencies and how do I explain how I let a toddler put a toothbrush down the toilet?"
"NO NO Mummy" he shrieked. "Dond stick your hand Mummy. No"
I said I wasn't going to... really... but then I tried, tentatively and felt nothing.
"Donddoid!" yelled Wren, grabbing me. "It not go down?"
You may recall that Wren has a phobia of things including mothers and Wren's being sucked down the plug in the bath. The toilet is noticeably bigger than the plughole so he suspected that one or both of us or perhaps just my arm could conceivably go down.

I flushed and it backed up a bit.

I flushed a few more times and it ran fine.

Josh handled the news with surprising equanimity and googled toothbrush down toilet or similar terms learning that it is one of the worst bathroom calamaties and unless you can rig a contraption out of a tube and a balloon to stick down and retract the best remedy is to remove the toilet and find the toothbrush which is invariably stuck in the bend behind it, capturing an increasing blockage of toilet STUFF.

Joshua is threatening to take the toilet off its seating when we are gone. I am afraid of this but glad I will not be there regardless.

He is hesitating only because it is a child's toothbrush which is a circumstance not addressed directly in the googled literature. Can a child's toothbrush make the turn?

Leaving tomorrow
We are leaving for Australia tomorrow. Josh will join us in a few weeks. I managed to submit our tax return yesterday so I am looking good to go. Our suitcases are overfull but they will be consigned and I am going for a month so a few extra outfits are in order. Wish us a safe and happy 22 hours from tomorrow evening till we arrive in Sydney.