Oh My Bottle!

I've not exposed the little one to bottle yet, we tried a few times when she was about 2 months old, but it didn't work. She has flatly refused to drink expressed milk from the bottle the few times I've left her home and went out to run errands, that my mum had to spoon feed the milk to her.

Guess what? Now, at 22 weeks, she wants a bottle! Why? because the che-che drinks milk from the bottle lying down next to her, and she's been trying to grab it all these while and suddenly a couple of days back she managed to wrestle the bottle from her che-che and was trying to put the teat into her mouth, when I dived in to rescue (the bottle) of course!

There goes my plan to weaning her from breast straight to sippy cup! Dang!

Yea, to avoid further injury (to the bottle and babies) I took out her bottle, that has been unused since the last attempt by mum, and filled it with some cooled boiled water and gave it to her. Look at the joy!

The Aftermath

So, the storm has hit on 24th of June at approximately 9.30am at DSH, thus delivering into our hands (straight from my cut-open tummy) a bouncy baby girl. Simultaneously confirming to the audience, that 1. her lungs are working fine and 2. she's gonna be our very own Mariah, our gorgeous little Ynez Sophia were handed over to us.

Staying true to her Mariah nature, she still continues to exercise her vocal chords, now more than ever, as she approaches the twenty-one week old mark. Aren't babies amazing? The one thing I'm grateful for with both of them is that they slept like babies (erm, like babies SHOULD) through the night from the second month on. Just that this little one tends to wake at least twice in the night for feed, unlike Nia who never did. .

So, I've been home since the storm hit, for the first month had mum staying with us preparing all the delish pantang food, together with my aunt who was looking after Nia since November 2008. Then my mum went back home and aunt and I managed the two until she decided that two is more than she can handle when I go back to work. With her decision to leave, we made a critical decision for me to stay home fulltime.

Boy, am I having fun or am I having fun? C'mon, guess! :P

Eating issues and Pediasure

The past week or so, Nia has completely slowed down on her eating, taking less & less milk during the day and even lesser solids compared to before. I was alarmed when I noticed she looked and felt like she's lost weight so last Thursday night we hauled her up to a local paed in Taman Tun, a Dr. Altaf who was highly recommended by our friends.

I initially intended to take a cab over from our side of Taman Tun but it started to rain so I waited for hubz to get home first. By the time we got to the clinic it was already past 8pm. He closes at 9.

There were 4 names before Nia's and quite a few kids runnign around the clinic. The staff were so friendly and polite, I was really impressed. It was almost 9 by the time we got to see him. Hubz commented that this doctor was spending a long time with each of his little patients. Then came our turn to find out. Before he even went to our issue of the day, he asked historical data on the child like what was her birth weight, has she had any fever, hospitalisation etc. He carefully wrote down everything before moving to the reason for our visit that day.

After listening to us intently, he checked Nia all over, ears, throat, tummy, lungs, the whole works and declared she seems abolutely fine save for slightly low weight for her age. She was 8.4kg at 13 mths, which, according to him was about 600g short of the ideal weight. She was born at 2.77kg which is also about 600g short of normal weight. It goes to show, he said, that she has not really caught up with the 600g as yet. He suggested we changed her milk to Pediasure complete and start her on MultiVits as supplement.

So last weekend we bought Pediasure and tried feeding her with it. As usual, because I'm there she barely had any, but I managed to coax her by feeding it in her sippy cup instead of bottle and she drank only half of the serving. But she has been taking her multivits every morning.

My aunt says these past two days she only drank 1 serving of the formula the whole day, that is about 220ml (around 7oz) which is too little. My aunt can't seem to get her to drink anymore than that as she prefers drinking water. I tried some of it in my quest to figure out why she does not like it, has anyone tried it before? It is so bloody sweet! It taste just like the vanilla cream drink from Coffee Bean, I'm not kidding. I wonder if I could dilute the formula with water to make it less sweet and try feeding it? Yes, I do know you aren't supposed to do that, but what else?

I notice the past few days since she's been on Pediasure, she wakes up more often in the middle of the night wanting feed, perhaps she's trying to replace the milk she refuses during the day with breast milk? Plausible, no?

Contemplating to try out another brand of formula now.

Throat Infection

Nia just recovered from a bout of throat infection. She has been refusing to eat since last Wednesday, my aunt took her temperature a couple of times and it seemed normal. When I go home she gets attached to me like a leech and refused to go to anyone else, not even her Daddy. According to my aunt she gulped down a bowl of soup Thursday morning but after that refused to eat anything else. We were all just wondering what was wrong because other than these couple of things, she was her usual self, singing & dancing and running around like she always do. Thursday night however, I was cradling her when I felt her body was warmer than usual, so I took her temperature and it was 38.8°, I was shocked and took it a couple more times and they still read 38.7° then 38. 8°, we hauled her up and took her to the nearest open clinic and begged the girl at the counter to let us see the doctor first as we were so worried that, God forbid, she might get another bout of fits.

Thank God there was none of that this time. Doctor diagnosed her with throat infection which explains why she has been refusing food, it wasn't that she didn't want any, she just had difficulty swallowing them, my poor baby. The doctor prescribed some antibiotics for her throat and suppository for her fever, it was a stronger dosage one called Voltrane (if I'm not mistaken), she inserted the first dosage of Voltrane in the clinic, but after that we only gave Nia PCM (Paracetamol) which is less strong and kept giving her this everytime her temperature rises. We started tepid sponging her till she fell asleep on Thursday night and hubz continued that on Friday while I was at work, as he took the day off because I couldn't. She woke up restless a couple of times at night wanting feed. Last we gave her PCM was Saturday morning about 2.30am.

That Saturday morning was a busy day for us as we had breakfast date with my gf Shaz, near our place at 8ish and we had to pick up hubz grandmother from the train station about 9.30am. Before we left we checked her temperature she seemed to be OK at 37.4° so decided not to give her anymore of the PCM as I wanted to see if her fever will return without continuous meds. As precaution, on the way to the TTDI market, we called up her Paed in D'sara Specialist only to find out that they were closed on that day! Thankfully, though, by evening she seemed to have recovered fully with temperature returning to normal (below 37°) but still has been refusing to eat properly so both hubz and I tried to make her different things on Saturday and Sunday to encourage her to eat.

The whole of yesterday I was scrutinising my poor baby for any signs of rashes or anything unusual as aparently most sicknesses in young children start from simple cold, flu and fever. Her Paed mentioned Roseola Infantum (also known as fake measles) to us before, which usually starts with high fever and on the 3rd day when the fever breaks the child will have rashes breakout on the trunk and head. This can happen to babies between 6 and 24 months old, but most children will get this at an earlier age. Although the rash itself are supposedly harmless and last for only 12 -14 hours, the thought of it makes my heart palpitate! And we're only talking about Roseola, I can not imagine what I'll do when I have to deal with chicken pox etcetera! *Sigh*

Anyways, all's well now, just that my aunt still complains that Nia is refusing to eat anything, if this continues I probably would just take her to see a Paed, regardless and see what the pro has to say.

My Boo

my sleepy "Boo"

the original Boo from Monsters Inc.

This is an unfinished version, i'm still editing the video to take out all the unnecessary background noises and am including a new front view video of her shaking her thang, if you notice all these are from behind, so you can't really see her facial expression. Will put in on here once its done.

OMG, my baby's so talented, where do you think she got it from? Her mama, of course ;oPPPP

Can babies FEEL embarassment/shame?

You bet! I have been reading tonnes of material on babies and parenting ever since I found out I was preggie, that was ermm, 17 mths ago. Some material I have read says that babies start feelign embarassment in two stages, 1st between the age of 15-20 months and later when they are about 3 years old is when the shame aspect comes in. The fact is, no matter how much you have read there will always be something to be surprised about when you have a little person eagerly trying to take in everything around them and at the same time trying to express themselves! I realised my little almost 9 month-old CAN be embarassed, only a couple of weekends back.

It all started one Saturday evening, while I was baking in the kitchen and she decided to venture out from the kitchen into my sister's room. One look into the room, I knew what exactly attracted her to it, my sister's bag with half the guts spilled out. Within seconds she was seated next to the beg which was placed on the mattress that was on the floor. When she put one hand out to grab the bag, both my sister and I went, "Hey!". She retrieved her hand, slowly pushed the room door to block us out of her view and grabbed the bag once more. The best part is, babies always think just because they cannot see us, they think we can't see either. Which is SO cute. Reminds me of a gf and her son, who plays hide and seek by covering his eyes thinking no one can see him when he does that!

Anyways, what happened was the next day mum came to visit so all of us girls were hanging out in my sister's room with Nia in the middle. There was mum, my aunt who is Nia's nanny, my two sisters & I. I recounted the story from the day before how Nia tried to not show us what she was doing by pushing the door etc. From the time I started telling the story she was already getting upset at me, she kept staring at me and shouting, "Eii!", "Eii!", she actually does this quite alot especially when we are talking about her, so I just went on with my story. But this time, when I finished telling the story, everyone laughed, and this was when she jumped on me from where she was seated, buried her face in my neck and started crying. I had to carry her in my arms and comfort her before the crying subsided.

Later that night when I re-told what happened to hubz, we both realised that she was actually embarassed! Now I know. I reckon when they are able to feel different emotions, they should be able to feel embarassed or shy too, no? Whatever the professionals may say on the topic. I mean, we can deduce babies actions and reactins to a certain degree, unless I sit down with Nia every minute of her waking life, recording every single thing that she does, I will never be able to tell for sure whether whatever that is written about babies in different stages are accurate as far as my baby's concerned, isn't that so? Aren't all babies, just like adults, individuals?

Nia did start crawling when she was barely 5 months, well, no, I wouldn't call that crawling, it was more like a caterpillar's movement, where she uses her head to push her way through, and sometimes, she leaps using her whole body! When she got tired of this, she tried walking, she will slide down from the couch and start crusing by holding on to the couch! At this point she can't even sit up yet, so I had concerns for her wanting to walk so fast when obviously her back and legs aren't strong enough. But we encouraged it nevertheless, just that, we took extra measures like ensuring she's fed sitting up straight in her baby chair and whenever she wants to be sitting up, we'll prop her against piles of pillows so that she get the 'experience' of it. Then, by the time she turned 6 mths, her two lower front teeth erupted, as you can imagine, this was a major event in our lives, not only Nia's! She only became extremely active in crawling after her teeth erupted, I do not know if there is any connection between this two events, but it seems so to me. Now that she can be classified as F1 crawler, she still cruises whenever possible and most time she will stand up holding on to something, like TV, book shelf & table and has her little "no-hands" moments!

Back to my point, what I'm saying is that just because there's no recorded evidence by the pros does not mean what a baby experiences is unreal. I guess, as parents, we may read too much into something, as of course, we all WANT to believe or LIKE to believe that our offsprings are the smartest/cleverest/cutest of the lot. Unfortunately, that is NOT my intention, I do not wish to start comparing Nia with other kids, I don't want her to grow up thinking that she's better than certain people or she's worse than some. It may be important that she has some competitive streak in her but this she can learn that when she's older by playing sports. Nia is Nia. She has spunk and lots of personality (as what her daddy claims!), she does not give up and she does everything in her own time. As a parent, I know my responsibility is to nurture that sense of independence & curiosity and allow her to be a baby AND an explorer.

I, too, am learn something new everyday and everyday hubz and I talk about what she did, what we did etc just to keep a tab on the small mistakes we make sometimes without even noticing and go through all the stuff that we should never do as parents. I do realise that nowadays 70% of the conversation hubz & I have are either on Nia or on parenting, only about 30% is for everything else. Not that I'm complaining in any way, I think I'm blessed to have a husband who wants to actively participate in his child's development and is as passionate about it all as I am.

my traumatic weekend

as always, i was SO looking forward to the long weekend last week to be with baby nia & hubz unfortunately i spent saturday to tuesday in the hospital instead. Nia woke up with mild fever, her temp was 37.8ºC, we decided to take her to the GP and get her checked. She did not have any flu or runny nose just sudden temperature. At the GP's however, her temp dropped a few points, but we still got some liquid paarcetamol in case the temp rises again. So we got home, rolled around, ate, fed her meds, slept for a bit, woke up, went to Cold Storage in 1U to get some groceries and got home. I checked her temp again soon as we got back (which was close to 6pm), her temp was 37.5ºC, my hubz ate first then went to roll around with the baby while i ate. All of a sudden he shouted "she's shivering" and carried her off into the car and started the engine. I ran to the car while my sis opened the gate so that we could back out of the porch.

I plonked in at the back seat and reached to get her from my husband and only then I realised that she was awfully light and her body was hard. I was carrying her in my arms and trying to make eye contact but she seem to be staring into space, I kept calling her name, when suddenly her face turned blue! At this time we were pulling out of the porch and I was screaming uncontrollably "She's turning blue! She's turning blue" (oh God, writing this down is harder than i thought it would be!). My hubz thought she was choking and asked me to check her mouth, I propped her up on my lap and tried to open her mouth but it was clasped shut and her eyes were shut too and her head lolled to one side with her face all blue!

I put her on my thigh and was tapping her back (as I thought she was choking) and all the while crying and wailing, "Stay with me, honey, stay with mummy, you're gonna be alright, you're gonna be alright". I lifted her up from my thigh and she gave one loud sigh and started to cry! And the colour returned to her face! But my God, within that 1 minute I thought I had died, but at the same time I wanted to keep her alive, I felt this pain in my guts that I had not felt before, the whole episode of my labour was running on FastForward in my head and I kept seeing her blue face with the blank eye staring into space. My baby! My precious little baby.

My hubz to dropped me off at accident & emergency entrance to DSH (which is nearer than going from the front) and I ran carrying her into the emergency area and asked, in the midst of tears and suppresed sob, to see a doctor. A medical officer took her to the treatment area, checked her, asked me to describe exactly what happened and diagnosed it as "febrile fits/seizures" caused by high temperature. He suggested that we admit her so that her temp can be monitored and called her paed to inform that we're admitting her. By this time, her temp dropped again to under 38ºC.

It DID NOT accur to me that she was actually having a 'febrile convulsions' or fever related fits/seizure until the doctor said it! I know what it is, I've heard about it a thousand times how when I was 11 months old I've had that same bloody fits and my folks frantically took me to the hospital as mine lasted for some time and I was also foaming in the mouth! But when it happened to my baby, I just wasn't prepared and it just didn't register! The strangest thing is that, from the time I took her temp (37.5ºC) to the time she had the fits it was probably less than half an hour, and within that time, the temp must have risen to a minimum of 39ºC which has caused the fits.

The less-than-4-minutes trip to DSH from our home was an excruciating journey for me. But through all of this, I must say that I now have greater admiration for my hubz who stayed calm throughout the ordeal, otherwise we may not even have gotten to the hospital!

For the benefit all new parents, here is an excerpt on febrile convulsions from www. netdoctor.co.uk. Although sometimes no matter how much knowledge you may have you may just black out at the crucial times, nevertheless, it's no harm to know.

What is a febrile convulsion?
Rapid temperature increases can cause febrile convulsions.
Febrile convulsions occur in young children when there is a rapid increase in their body temperature. It affects up to 1 in 20 children between the ages of one and four but can affect children between six months and about five years old. Children who are at risk may naturally have a lower resistance to febrile convulsion than others.

What is the risk of suffering a febrile convulsion?
Children may inherit the tendency to suffer febrile convulsion from their parents.

• If either parent suffered a febrile convulsion as a child, the risk of the child getting it rises 10 to 20 per cent.
• If both parents and their child have at some point suffered a febrile convulsion, the risk of another child getting it rises 20 to 30 per cent.

Nevertheless, the child's susceptibility also depends on whether the child frequently gets infections. About 4 out of 10 children who have had febrile convulsions will get them again at some stage, although the risk differs greatly from child to child. The child's risk of febrile convulsion rises if:

• they are genetically predisposed to it
• they suffer frequent illnesses, which include high temperatures
• the first attack of febrile convulsion was accompanied by a relatively low body temperature - below 39ºC.

One in a thousand children may suffer a febrile convulsion after receiving the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine. In these cases it occurs 8 to 10 days after the vaccination and is caused by the the measles component of the vaccine. However, this causes only about one tenth of cases of febrile convulsion compared with measles itself. Children who are prone to febrile convulsions should follow the same programme of vaccination as all other children.

What are the symptoms?

• The attack often begins with the child losing consciousness, and shortly afterwards the body, legs and arms go stiff.
• The head is thrown backwards and the legs and arms begins to jerk.
• The skin goes pale and may even turn blue briefly.
• The attack ends after a few minutes and the shaking stops. The child goes limp, and then normal colour and consciousness slowly return.
• Some children regain consciousness faster than others

What to do if your child suffers an attack of febrile convulsion

Do not intervene while the attack is taking place except in the circumstance outlined below.Carefully turn the child's head to one side to prevent choking. In the past, it was common to place a stick in the child's mouth to prevent bites to the tongue or lips. This should never be attempted, as it may result in lasting damage to the teeth.When the fit subsides, keep the child in the recovery position, ie lying on its side. If fits are prolonged or follow each other rapidly, call an ambulance. The first time a child suffers febrile convulsions they should be admitted to hospital. If the child has suffered attacks on earlier occasions, hospitalisation is not always necessary. However, it is always important, for example, to determine whether the convulsions are only due to a harmless viral infection. For this reason, a doctor should always be consulted following an attack.