'Once in a lifetime' Olympic experience ~ Part One

Did you get caught up in Great Britain fever this summer? Either for the Queen's Jubilee, Wimbledon, the Olympics, or the Euro's?

I did to an extent, although given I was in hospital for most of it, not as much as I may have been otherwise.

However, I did manage some excitement about the Olympics. Mainly because I was lucky enough to get tickets! Yay!

I had won tickets with ITV and Cadbury back in September 2011, around the time I found out I was pregnant. I contacted the cadbury / ITV about this and they advised I need to contact the Olympics booking team. It started to turn in to a nightmare due to it been decided babies needed tickets. I needed a ticket for my baby, who wasn't born, and couldn't buy a ticket until she was born (nearly nine months later). Several emails were sent and finally in April / May of this year I received notification that a babes in arms policy had been introduced. Finally some sense.

I don't travel well at the best of times and combining this with my mental health issues and a new baby, I was panicking about everything! Instead of my usual panicking and stressing, leading to more anxiety, panicking, and stressing, I wrote a list of what could go wrong and tried to work through it (maybe the therapy was paying off). I checked the hotel had cots available. I checked how to get to the hotel, avoiding the Tube, I hate it at the best of times, never mind with baby.

Two days before we were due to set off, I still had a list of unanswered questions, more than any normal new mum would have! So I emailed the lady dealing with the prize package.

Two hours later I get a reply. The package doesn't allow anyone under 12 years old! Hmmm I have an 7 week old baby, I can see a problem here! I emailed back saying I had spoken to several people about my baby, why was this only just been pointed out to me now? I told them I had checked tickets were not needed, I have checked hotel had cots...

She told me she needed to check with package organisers. I checked their website and it stated person booking packages had to be over 18 but no stipulations on guests. I started to seriously panic. I started to look for rooms online, just in case. I had already paid for advance train tickets so figured I may as well go, if I could afford it, and get tickets. Twitter, as always, helpful in getting places to look. However the rooms were too expensive, no surprise. I found two rooms on eBay for one night each, separate sides of the city but best I could do. 

Still no reply from the package organisers, so Sunday (the night before we were due to leave), I emailed them saying I needed to know so I could pay for these rooms if needed. Finally the response came, we were good to go! Great news finally!