Definitely financially because, I don’t know how many miles exactly, but it takes about 40 minutes each way and this was every day for six days. So, I remember it being quite a tight month. We didn’t get any support with that. I don’t know whether that would have been something we’d have- if we’d sought out, we’d have got support for that but at the time we just paid it and got on with it.

Is that transports costs – was it petrol?

Yeah, we had to drive up. I don’t know. As I’m saying it I’m wondering if there is support or whether that’s if you’re an in-patient. But if there is anything like that maybe make that aware, you know, to parents, even when they’re travelling to and fro, that they can get a little bit of help with that because like I say, we weren’t lucky enough to live right near where we needed to be.

But I remember after sort of coming to the realisation that I needed to get to where he was and what had happened, one of the first questions that came to me was “Where? How did it happen? How could this have happened if he was being watched?” I remember feeling really angry because, you know, although they’re all his family and it was actually his dad and things, I felt that “Had he have been with me this wouldn’t have happened” which it would have done, it was completely unavoidable, but I remember feeling really angry and just baffled as to how this had happened.

I remember being really, and I regret it now, but I remember being really harsh, shall we say, towards my husband for a long time afterwards because, naturally, being his mum, I felt that I was the best person, that it wouldn’t have happened in my care kind of thing. And I remember being really angry “Where were you? How did you let this happen? You know he’s into everything.” And I remember being really horrible about it. Not dramatically horrible but sort of being a bit judgmental, shall we say, towards how my husband, you know, “You didn’t even go with him in the ambulance” and things, and I didn’t really think that, at the time, it was because it was completely horrific for him. And I do feel bad about that now, but it was just the way I dealt with it, I guess.

If I’m being honest, we weren’t given any support other than, obviously, the surveys and things. But with regards to support for us, there wasn’t really anything, if I’m honest, unless I completely missed it, or whatever, we weren’t given any you know, cards with names on it or numbers, other than that link to ‘If you struggle in the future, this might be a good site for you’ but even then I found the site “Oh, I can’t really use that because that’s for people with…” I felt bad that it wasn’t bad, if that makes sense. So, I felt that I didn’t belong in the counselling for burn victims because mine was going to solve itself, mine was going to go away kind of thing. So yeah, it was difficult. I would have liked the support, but would I have used it, is the question.

I probably would have, initially after everything had calmed down, I would have probably liked to have been offered some support rather than “If you need it, it’s on the back of this” kind of thing. I know that’s pretty much what they’ve done on the form, but they didn’t say, you know “If you’re struggling there’s a helpline.” They just said “Oh, there’s a number there if you need it” pretty much. So, it would have been nice to have been, you know “How are you feeling about it? Are you feeling confident that you can carry this on at home?” and things. It was just a very quick process really.

I’m one of these people that I think “Oh” you know ‘I don’t really have the right to moan because it was …’ but, if I’m being honest, if I was to get counselling for it there’s probably a lot more that would come out, as it were, than I think. But do I want to reopen it, or do I just move on and accept that it happened, and we were really lucky? I’m kind of in limbo with would I have took the support or would I have just got on with it kind of thing?

Also, when they changed the dressings, they had to – which was probably the hardest part of the whole thing other than the incident itself – they had to scrape the scabbing to encourage it to bleed, which, obviously, on a baby that they’re having to pin down to do so, that’s absolutely screaming in pain, was horrific, and I remember one of the terms – I can’t remember what it was called – but they did actually explain in a bit of a basic term afterwards that one of the dressings after the first two or three days of it scabbing, they used silver inside the dressing and they said it basically tricks the body into thinking that it’s scabbed over so it heals a lot faster.

And then they had to sort of scrape them and they said “Oh, they’re bleeding, so it’s actually a good sign because there’s blood flow there” and that was all a good sign. But yeah, it was just awful. They did that on the first day and then re-dressed it and then leading up to that it was just changing them and changing them and putting different dressings that had different, like the silver etc., until it was down to just plasters.

He was treated as an outpatient at first, in Casualty of the hospital, he was basically just bandaged to keep it clean and less risk of infection. But the hospital that he was sent to in the ambulance, other than to dress it and to keep it clean and safe, they would not treat him because they weren’t a specialist burns unit and, obviously, especially with his age, they would only be willing to get it covered and comfortable and give him pain relief and then they sent him to a different hospital. But that was actually the next day, so we basically took him home from Casualty mummified and then I remember the next day we had to travel all the way to this other hospital that was specialised in it. And, from then, it was sort of all different types of bandages.