Feverish New Year

Declan fell ill on CNY eve…. The day before CNY eve, he was exceptionally cranky. He was basically screaming throughout the whole day. For no reason, he’ll shriek in a high pitch voice to show his displeasure with god knew what. Kiat grew impatient with him, thinking that he was merely throwing tantrums. But I told him that something was obviously bothering this little baby for him to behave so unusually. It’s just that we really did not know what was wrong.

Nothing seemed to be able to soothe him. Carried him – didn’t want, let him lied down on bed – he didn’t want, put him in sarong – he didn’t want, gave him toys – he didn’t want, talked to him, sang to him – he didn’t want…… All he did was cried and screamed…. The worse thing was he didn’t want to take his milk, nor his porridge or cereal….. Before this episode, his milk in-take had already dropped quite a bit ever since he started on solid. For a 7 months old baby, his milk in-take was only about 100-120ml per 3 hours feed. He had lost much of the chubbiness accumulated over the first 6 months. Many friends and relatives noticed that he kind of trimmed down. I was not too bothered about him trimming down so long as he’s healthy and active. This time, his milk in-take dropped to a sinfully low of about 60-80ml….and he rejected his porridge and cereal as well…… That really got us so worried….

CNY eve day, he woke up pretty “warm”. I hugged him and thought that he was running a fever. Kiat tried to take his temperature with an ear scan thermometer, he refused to keep still and kept whirling his head and screaming, making it impossible to register an accurate measurement. We let it go, bathed him, fed him a bit of milk, let him continued screaming and put him back into his sarong for him to sleep again. When he woke up again, I touched him and still thought that he feel slightly “warmer” than usual. So, we decided to send him to see a doctor. We looked at the time… sharks! It’s past 12p.m….. and it’s CNY eve… where got doctor??!! Still, we tried our luck and checked out at least 4 clinics but all closed. Finally, we went to a 24 hour clinic at clementi central. The doctor measured his temperature to be about 37.3 degrees Celsius and declared that he’s not running a fever but nevertheless prescribed fever and stomach wind medication for him…. That made me felt like a kiasu and kiasee mother…..

But hor, I’m really not convince that he’s not having a fever… really felt warm leh…. Anyway, we let him sleep again once we reached home, the next time he woke up; he was “steaming hot” on the head! AH HA! See??!! I was right!! He’s really running a temperature. I quickly fed him the medication with Kiat’s help and slap on a piece of “OK pok” on his forehead. At first I was worried that he might not like the feeling on a piece of thing across his forehead and might tear it down but luckily he seemed pretty at ease with the “ok pok” and could still manage a smile
when I teased him.





His temperature only subsided this morning. He ended up with a piece of “ok pok” slapped across his forehead throughout CNY eve and first day of CNY. As for me…. I ended up with a bad bout of flu on the first day of CNY… what a way to welcome the new year….