"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another."

I'm not a very stressy person, i don't generally let things get to me and I'm pretty laid back in most situations (maybe a little to laid back if you were to ask that lovely lady of mine). Mrs M does enough stressing and worrying for the four of us so i try to spend my time calming her down and making things a little easier on her. Last night though was a different story.
 

Opeie woke up after being asleep for a couple of hours screaming and it seemed like he was struggling to breath. Despite my usual laid back/things will be okay attitude, i felt like i was going to have a panic attack and all rational thinking seemed to go out the window. I was fully aware that Seth had been off school that day and had been coughing and was quite unwell but that didn't register at this point. Opeie sounded like he was struggling to breath and i thought the worst. When it comes to your children i don't think you can help feeling this way. As it was the first time Opeie had really been ill i think it just magnified the situation for us as doting parents.

Two years back Seth ended up quite ill and after many trips to the hospital and being told those magic words Doctors learn at medical school over and over again "It's Viral" they finally diagnosed him with having pneumonia. The month leading up to that point was very stressful and upsetting and the two weeks that Seth spent in hospital brought on many tears, but during that time i felt like i was the strong one, calming Mrs M down where i could.
 

It came to my attention last night though that with Opeie being my child, my feelings were different and as i said before my rational thoughts had vanished. Seth is always treated like he's my boy and i don't like to think that i feel differently about them but clearly I'm not the overly panicky parent with Seth because i know he has many other people around him to make sure he's okay.When i think about it I'm bound to act a little differently as me and Opeie are practically joined at the hip and Seth has another life outside of us three.

Thankfully it wasn't anything serious last night and clearly he had just picked up what Seth has got and was struggling to clear the mucus, That mixed with a high temperature and the shakes was very frightening, obviously for us and him. It made me think how lucky we are that he is such a healthy child over all (thanks to Mrs M's magical produce). It's a grim thought but i don't know what i would do if anything happened to him but i can be safe in the knowledge that the one thing that does knock my laid back attitude clean off its feet is the development of my boy, the most important thing of all.