On Saturday, December 15, we queued for 2.5 hours to see Rynus' pediatrician, famous Dr Ong Eng Keow from International Child & Adolescent Clinic, located at Mount Alvernia hospital. We thought about other alternatives like Dr Jean Lim, the PD we frequent most at Rafflies Medical, Tampines One for its convenient location, or Dr Veronica Toh at Raffles Hospital since Rynus has his full medical record with Dr Toh. But in the end, I made the call to visit Dr Ong instead since he's the PD assigned to both Renzo and Rynus since birth. Although they both only went to him once for review as new born, we figured that Dr Ong is extremely experienced from the way he treated the severe jaundice for both boys.
Okay side track a bit here, we all know that Asian babies develop jaundice often around 3-5 days after birth. There is this flower/wood sold at any Chinese medical hall for SGD$1.5-2 per pack, which can be used for 3 times. Grab that to shower your baby by pouring a portion into hot water, wait till the water turns brownish, remove all the flowers/wood from the hot water, add in cold water to make the temperature just right and shower your baby with the water. I bet it works better than sun bathe (not easy during rainy season) or phototherapy (most people do not do it unless advised by doctor after review) to certain extend, at least you can try this before the review on 5th or 7th day.Anyway back to baby Rynus, his situation was not as serious as the previous time. He only developed some dry cough on the 14th evening, he had pretty bad whizzing and vomited out a bit of phlegm. He had a fever of 38.3 degree on the 15th morning but his fever subsided soon after taking 1ml of paracetamol. Other than that, he looked perfectly alright, not lethargic or cranky like most other sick babies.
We were quite shocked when Dr Ong announced that Rynus got a croup infection and might need to be admitted to hospital. It took Dr Ong less than 30 seconds to come to that conclusion, before he even took out his stethoscope to examine our baby, that showed how experienced he is and made me feel the long wait outside his door is super worthwhile.
Basically croup is a viral infection of the voice box, which causes a dry "barking seal" cough. Dr Ong made an effort to patiently advise a few great tips to us which I find extremely useful for young parents.
1. If you have one and only one child at home, it's extremely common that your child only get sick for the very first time, at the age of one or one and half years old, so do not take that for granted and think that babies won't get sick at a tender young age of a few months old.
2. If your elder child is attending pre-school, chances for the younger one to get infected is extremely high, unless you could separate them at home most of the time. A cough or sneeze from the elder one could get the baby infected easily if he/she did that right in front of the face of your poor little one.
3. You might think baby is just having a normal flu, and there's no fever at all, but PD might advise to admit the baby, why? Because if baby is not having enough fluid, they will get dehydrated. At such a young age, it's better to be safe than sorry.
4. Then how can you tell when to admit the baby as PD only advised to admit if necessary? Monitor your baby carefully, if he/she is not drinking well, meaning wants milk but has to stop during feeding to breathe through the mouth, then don't hesitate because in the hospital, they can put baby on a machine to monitor how much oxygen baby can inhale and if the level drops, it could be pretty dangerous, but at home, there's no way for you to figure that out.
5. When your baby starts to show signs of illness, note down the symptoms and timing. That's the reason why doctors and nurses always start with questions like "how long....??", because if the baby is infected with virus or bacteria, usually the 3rd or 4th day could be the peak period so if you notice that baby is not recovering after that, most likely immediate medical treatment is required.
Rynus was given antibiotics and we have to loan a nebulizer for home treatment every 4 hourly. Luckily when we went back to Dr Ong for review on Tuesday morning, he's almost recovered but we need to give him some other medicine for his loose stool and bad rashes on his buttock. Fortunately, he can finally say byebye to his nebulizer and there's no need to admit him to hospital.
