The stoics

Sometimes, I affectionately refer to my youngest daughter as 'Snuffles', based on the fact that, as a baby, she always, always had a cold. I suspect that most parents have these slightly embarrassing nicknames for their offspring. At least that's what I tell myself. I also tell myself that plenty of them are a lot worse than 'Snuffles', which has the added benefit of being quite accurate at the moment.

I spent a delightful morning with her yesterday. We really bonded with each other on the way around Asda, I felt. All was happiness and joy in the Youngest Child compartment of my brain. So imagine my dismay when, upon returning home from work yesterday evening, I found her sprawled helplessly on the sofa, drowning in a steamy lake of her own snot. She was not literally drowning, but the sense of alarm I expect you felt when you read that may just approach the heartbreak I experienced as I discovered my daughter's plight. She could barely breathe. Each violent sneeze provoked a panicked and tearful response in her. Her temperature has remained much higher than it has any right to be throughout the disrupted, uncomfortable, spluttery and mucusy night.

What is remarkable though is that, in spite of all this suffering, she has stoically retained her mischievously positive outlook on life. She woke up smiling this morning, imploring my wife and I to give her a tickle. Anything for a laugh. She's out now with her mum, buying dinner to make later for her Great Grandad. Admittedly, my wife will probably be doing the cooking, but just to contribute to such altruism in the face of her germ-based adversity is nothing short of heroic. And completely foreign to me.

I have, however, had to display some stoicism of my own this morning. I'm doing it right now, in fact - I'm only writing this as a distraction from my anguish. I have previously spoken at length about the troubles our eldest has had with separation anxiety when dropped at nursery. Usually my wife - who works from home and, frankly, is above me in our children's affection hierarchy - does the dropping. She understandably finds our daughter's distress quite distressing.

I have a day off work today so, to give my wife a break and to see whether the change in dynamic would help our daughter, I did the nursery run. I stayed with her for a little while, as my wife has taken to doing, to ease her in gently to her morning away from us. After half an hour though, my daughter had shown no sign of detaching herself from my side. As I finished reading what was quite an entertaining Bob the Builder book to her, one of the nursery nurses asked her if she'd like to go and play outside with her. After some desperate persuasion from me and every other adult in the room (whose collective concern for our situation was touching) she agreed to venture outside without me, but not before casting me one last, desperate and insecure glance. "Don't leeeeeeeaaaaave meeeeee," said her mournful eyes.

And then I left.

Another nursery nurse approached me with disconcerting urgency and informed me that my daughter was having the most delightful and carefree time in the garden, and that now would be my best chance to escape. (Escape? I was having fun!) I hovered indecisively by the back door, unsure whether to defy the advice I had just been given by going to bid my daughter farewell, when I was intercepted by yet another nursery nurse, who assured me that she would say goodbye on my behalf. The message was clear: it's better this way. They all seemed pretty sure, so I reluctantly took their advice and made my pitiful, cowardly exit.

But they didn't see the look in her eyes. I feel like I've betrayed her.

I'm no stoic. I think I might be the bad guy.