10 Truths About Kids With Gastro
What Happens When Gastro Affects Your Family?
Parenting can be a challenging experience that tests your patience, endurance, and willingness to smile through the chaos. Then there’s the gastro. Consider this your warning if your family has so far been able to avoid gastroenteritis. Once it appears, it is as subtle and graceful as a wrecking ball.
You’re eating your dinner peacefully one minute, and then you see someone’s face turn pale and their eyes start to water. You know what is coming. By the time you ask, “Are You Okay? It’s started even before you ask, “Are you okay?” Welcome to the sticky and smelly world of children with gastro – a rollercoaster ride of bodily liquids, lost sleep, and heroic amounts of laundry.
We’ll dive into what happens if your child gets the gastro bug. Based on our own experience, many late nights and way too many disinfectant wipes, we can tell you that it is a horrible thing.
1. Laundry? Then Multiply it. Double it.
The laundry avalanche that gastro causes will make those days seem like a distant memory. In a single evening, you’ll find yourself with a laundry avalanche that includes pyjamas, bedsheets, and pillowcases. You will also need towels, backup towels, and more towels.

You’ll never run out of things to wash. In 48 hours, you will use your washing machine many more times than usual. Then again. And then again.
Do not forget to stock up on extra mattress protectors. They’ll be needed.
2. You will Suddenly be Able to Understand the Quarantine Signs on a More Personal Level.
Remember the old-time plague illustrations with houses marked by red crosses as a warning? You’ll want to cordon off your front door when gastro strikes. Visitors? Not a chance. Deliveries? Please leave your deliveries at the gate.
You will tell your friends that you cannot make it to the playgroup. You will email the school. Your in-laws will receive a text message saying, “Do Not Enter Under Any Circumstances.” Your home becomes a hermit Kingdom. Instead of quiet solitude, the house is filled with groans, crying, and distant dry-heaving.
What’s the worst thing? It doesn’t always affect just one child. The doomsday effect is a domino effect. You will be dealing with staggered infection — as soon as one child starts eating crackers, the next falls.
3. You Can Forget about Sleep, Showers, and Even Leaving the House
You won’t leave your house. You won’t leave the house for anything. Not to buy groceries, coffee, or even to empty the bins. You will be on lockdown. You’ll only travel between the bathroom, the laundry, and, if you are lucky, the front door to get some fresh air while you remove a bag of contaminated towels.
Sleep? Sleep? That’s a myth. Sit beside your child’s bedroom, place a hand on the back, and whisper “it’s ok” to keep them awake. It will occur again.
Do you have your shower? This is the ultimate in luxury. You will think about it all the time, but never get to do it.
4. Say Goodbye to Moisturised, Soft Hands
Do you know the fancy hand creams that promise a soft and dewy complexion? The gastro parenting experience is far superior. Your skin will be like sandpaper after washing your hands. Your hands will be abused by antibacterial soaps, sanitisers, and the constant scrubbing of your fingernails.
Of course, it’s important. You are touching bedsheets and wiping surfaces. You are administering medication, and you’re trying to get electrolytes into small mouths. You are also desperately trying, but not, to catch the virus yourself. Let’s be honest: you will still do it.
What is your signature scent? Top notes of fatigue in hand sanitiser and bleach.

5. You Will Become a Genius at Towel Layering
The towels are your first line in the fight against bodily fluids. You can layer them on couches, drape them over car seats, place them next to your child’s beds, or strategically position them around the house as landmines in case of an emergency.
You can forget decorative cushions and stylish blankets. Your lounge room is going to be styled with “panic towel Chic”. It’s not Instagram-worthy, but it’s practical and absorbent and might just save your sanity.
6. You Will Witness Some Things that Would Make Childbirth Seem Tame
There’s no time to be squeamish. Hold on. Children with gastro aren’t concerned about being neat, aiming, or warning you. Vomit will be thrown up on their laps, your carpet, your shoes, or even directly into your face.
You’ll clean surfaces that you never knew could contain liquid. You will scoop chunks out of the drain holes. You will plunge toilets before dawn. You will wipe, rinse, and disinfect the toilets.
What about the smell? You will be shocked by the potent smell of a child suffering gastroenteritis. You will be waving eucalyptus oils and burning candles like a priest is performing an exorcism.
7. The Bucket or the Bowl is Never Close Enough
Place a bucket within arm’s length, teach your child how it works, and encourage him to call out to you when he needs it. When it happens, you might as well have the bucket in another suburb. The younger kids are the ones who rarely arrive on time.
You’ll start bringing extra buckets, towels, wipes, and bins>everywhere/em>. You will start to bring extra bins, buckets, towels, and wipes wherever. You can use the car, bedroom, or hallway. Nowhere is safe in this mobile mess zone.
8. When you think the Worst is over, it’s not
You think that it has finally passed. Your child is sleeping through the night. They ask for toast. You breathe out a sigh. Then — splat.
This virus is sneaky. This virus leaves you hanging on to hope and then boomerangs with a last performance. It’s like watching a movie and then seeing a horror scene after the credits.
Even worse? As soon as the first child recovers, the second child begins to appear pale. You’re suddenly housebound for 10 days.
9. The 24-hour Rule Exists. The 24-hour Rule is Real
You must keep your child at home, even after the vomiting has stopped. This is to prevent it from spreading to others. It makes sense, but how do you explain that to a child who is feeling great and has been watching Bluey for the past two days?
You have a child who is ready to jump from furniture, but you are told that “no daycare” yet. So, now your house still smells of disinfectant.
The part of gastro that no one discusses is the last leg of cabin fever, when everyone is fine yet not allowed to leave. You will do puzzles, bake, create art, watch more TV, and pace. There’s so much pacing.

10. It’s Likely that You Will Also Get it. It’s Even Worse When the Parents Are Sick.
You’ll feel… strange once your child starts to bounce off the walls. You feel your stomach turn. You break into a sweat. Then you realize — it’s now your turn.
What could be worse than having to care for a child who is vomiting? You’re vomiting while you do it. The gastro fairy spares none. While your children are snoozing between episodes, you will be lying on the cold tiles of the bathroom in a fetal position, praying for mercy.
Your children, now that they are fully recovered, will naturally want to play. They will jump on you. They will ask you for snacks. You’ll be asked to help them build LEGOs, read books, and chase after them in the hall. It hurts no matter what you do.
The worst is gastro. Gastro is the absolute worst. It will pass, just like every parenting catastrophe. You’ll survive. You will mop the floor, wash the bedding again, and one glorious day,y you will eat without fear of food coming back up.
Gastro is an Important Parenting Rite of Passage
Gastro isn’t glamorous. It is messy, exhausting, and borders on trauma. It also shows how resilient parents are. With one hand, we clean up vomit in the middle of the night while comforting our children with the other. We survive on willpower, no sleep, and no food. Even in the most disgusting moments, we find humor and strength.
If you are in the middle of the storm right now, in a house full of towels and the smells of electrolytes, know that you’re not the only one. It will pass. When it’s over, you will emerge stronger, smelling better, and with an entirely new appreciation for your humble washing machine.