Monday, May 23, 2011

Good food, bad food, bad, bad, bad...

So it has been 8 months, that's the age of my Ayesha Amani. She started solid at 5 and a half month with doctor's advise. Weaning was a whole new experience for me , I get to experiment and enjoy the look in her face when she liked or disliked a certain type of food. I started her with pumpkin puree, at first the Heinz Pumpkin and Sweet Corn , but after a while I realised that these are packed food. Why not give her pumpkin puree which I freshly made. I also gave her plain porridge and sweet potato puree, then she had the Nestle' Cereal, and later on she started to become very picky. She didn't like pureed food and wanted rice porridge. Whatever it is, I am doing my best to ensure she receives balanced nutrition.

I am very particular with feeding her stuff. I tried to keep myself updated with what is good and what could be bad for her. I know all babies are different, so her tolerance of a certain type of food will be different than others her age. That's me.

But I am not the one who I noticed that at the daycare they fed her porridge with anchovies and she started showing alergy reaction. One thing with Amani's caregiver is that she already had 4 babies, therefore it is kind of hard to tell her what to give and what not to give. The caregiver has this habit of feeding my child stuff and only tell me about it the day after. Don't get me wrong, she takes GREAT care of my baby. Really, you can see that Amani loves her. However I get very upset when people feed Amani things that I am not approved of. Sweet, salty and oily stuff. Please keep those things away from her.

The caregiver had once fed Amani honey, at the age of 6 months. Her intention was to help Amani with her flu problem. Amani, at a very very young age has started to develop alergy. According to doctor this is because me, her mother has a terrible alergy too. I suspected Amani was fed chocolate or something sweet too one day because she just couldn't keep seated at home. She was practically all over the place. Though me being strict, baby is always sick, ngeeeeeee.

Until recently last Thursday I received a call from the daycare, saying that she had high fever. This wasn't the first time, of course. She's had fever before and I know hers is not the kind of fever that goes away after one or two days. Apparently she had diarrhea too. So we picked her up after work and took her to clinic. Yes, she had high fever. It got worst that midnight and I took her to the hospital for further check up. The paediatrician in my area were closed. None was open that day so we opted for the closest government hospital, Hospital Selayang. As expected, I was sent home and told to wait until 3 days. Come back if she still has fever the day after, the doctor said.

You see, all these visits to doctors and hospitals, often get me very frustrated. I ALWAYS feel dissatisfied with the service and information provided. I am still looking for a paediatrician which can satisfies my baby's need. My daughter's fever did not get any better and on the evening of that second day my husband convinced me to see the paediatrician behind our house. Actually he'd been telling me to see this doctor since the day before, but I don't quite like the doctor. The medication are alright but I didn't like the fact that he is always in a rush because he has too many patients!

Anyway the first question asked by this paed was 'What did you feed her,' when I told him Amani had very high fever and diarrhea for two days already. I told him I didn't but I knew she had soft-boiled egg the day before she was sick, and asked if this could be rotavirus. The doctor went ballistic and said if that's what she had, this is worse than rotavirus. She could've gotten samonella virus, her stomach could've been infected he said. So we were given two options: i) To take oral salt and diarrhea medication or ii) Take a strong antibiotic. We could choose one he said because Amani looks alert, still. But we chose antibiotic as we don't want to take any chances.

It had been sleepless, tiring night looking after sick Amani. Purging, crying you name it. The diarrhea got better after the antibiotic, and fever had come down but came back very quickly. However the fever had stopped on Sunday. Now we only have her diarrhea and vomitting to deal with.

Whatever it is I am just glad that nothing serious happened. I constantly remind myself that I must be firm with whoever is taking care of Amani. Besides, giving her everything she wants is not the value I am teaching my child. Not.

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