Friday 27th March

Occasionally one will find oneself with a child who develops a temporary food intolerance, particularly to dairy products.

By this I mean you feed them and they return it to you threefold.

If you have a child with a longstanding habit of doing this, you are actually in a better equipped position because you never let them drink their milk without standing guard, holding a catching vessel, ready for the first heave of fluid. One can become quite adept at catching a moving flow. We know because we had one of these such children.

However, if you have grown unused to such habits because the necessity has long since passed, but you are of the ilk that continues to produce more children, you may find that nature lands you with a tricky one. One that usually holds their dairy but occasionally decides to have a stomach bug, or an excess of phlegm, or just a mischevious twinkle in his eye. This type of child will wait till long after their drink or meal, until they seem to be out of the danger zone and are wandering or resting unsupervised, and then choose to upheave their stomach contents.

Having such a child presently and having been caught off-guard three times in the last 48 hours (that doesn't include the one that I did manage to catch), I thought I would share my words of wisdom on how to clean up after the event.

Firstly, it is useful to have a husband or other trained animal professional present who will take the sticky wriggly, now excuberant and uncooperative child to a seperate place to be washed. If this is not possible, try to cordon off the affected area while you clean the child yourself, and come back later.

Note: repeatedly shrieking and pointing to the disaster zone and giving warning of its existence is an ineffective method of cordoning, and will most likely draw more children towards it rather than driving them away.

Secondly, baby wipes are your friends. After using kitchen roll to remove larger clumps (and this is where mucus does come in handy, because it does stick them all together) from floors, mattresses or furniture, baby wipes clean pretty much everything. I mean obviously disinfectants, fabric sprays and carpet shampoos are all useful and necessary for deep cleaning, and for getting rid of the germs and the smell, but when it comes to getting it off here and now, when you are supposed to pick the other children up at 3.15 and it is now 3 o'clock, and you just need to get the stuff off everything before people come home and walk through it or sit on it, nothing else beats those baby wipes. Yes, that was me on Thursday.

Thirdly, do not put any affected fabrics straight into the wash. Most mothers discover early on that using a washing machine is not guaranteed to remove chunks and will either leave them intact or, more likely, spread them into smaller particles that smear and stick to the fabric, never to be freed again. In fact, someone near and dear to my heart once found an entire poo in her drum after emptying it of laundry, and had no idea how it got there. Amateur.

Instead, use the following tactics:

A ) Showering the item(s) - good for getting the chunks straight off and into the drain, ready for the machine. However, this is not good for duvets or any other large items, as the target matter just seems to spray off one area and straight onto another, causing you to lift the item higher and higher until eventually you find yourself entwined with it and face to face with the only spot you managed to miss. Even after you think you've got it all down the drain, you will - I repeat - you will inevitably walk downstairs and realise you've managed to get some on your slippers.

B ) Using the ever faithful baby wipes and picking up the chunks clump by clump and putting them straight in the bin. Suitable for larger laundry items, but not for those who are weak stomached or those who like to keep their dignity. Having lost mine a long time ago, my only issue with this one is that it takes a long time.

C ) Flushing the item. That right folks, your trusty lav can be multi-functional. That flow is great for pulling those chunks straight down and away from your eyesight - after all, that's what it is designed for. Extreme caution is to be used when using this method however. Flushing an item too large may clog your system and bring the water (and the matter you were trying to dispose of) back up towards you. A tight grip is to be maintained on smaller items at all times, otherwise you may as well have saved the water and just used the bin. And finally, always, always make sure that you have removed the child before flushing any items of their clothing.