Stefanie Preissner: Listening to my baby cough in the small hours, I need a worry hotline to tell me that it’s OK, sick happens

"Why do illnesses always get worse at night? In the dark hours, nothing is simply managed. To get any sort of help out of hours seems nuclear. It’s an emergency doctor, an ambulance or a trip to A&E." Stock image: Getty

Stefanie Preissner

A cough. I freeze. A silent prayer to whatever god will listen that another doesn’t follow. A silent prayer interrupted by another cough. A stream of terrible outcomes bursts the banks of my mind — sleepless nights, straining for breath, children’s hospital, sepsis, death. I try to pull myself back. It’s only a cough. It might not progress. Quick, get breast milk into him ASAP. The cough gets chestier.

I get progressively panicked and brutal with myself for not curing him with breast milk.