Visit to the A&E

Dear friends,

So far we've been weaning Lizzie on to solid foods for about a month now, and she seems to take to pretty much anything (pureed carrots, pumpkins, banana, pear, peach etc). Though she’s eating well – still no sign of teeth! But we think it may be quite soon, because shes biting everything she can get her hands on, and her chin is constantly wet with dribble.

We had a bit of a scare about two weeks ago, when the docs suspected her shunt got blocked. We had to bring Lizzie in for scanning, and the doctor that scanned her heart said the shunt appeared narrower at one end, although the blood flow through the shunt was very good.
We prayed that the shunt would not be blocked or even narrowed, and we were to told to continue monitoring her oxygen. Should the saturations lower to the 60s, Lizzie would have to be admitted to hospital for heparin (a much stronger blood thinning medicine) to be administered. Although in the hospital the dosage would be controlled, thinning the blood would prevent clotting, in babies, the way they wriggle and flail their arms and legs around would put them in possible risk of internal and external bleeding. So we’ve been praying for good oxygen saturations, and that Lizzie would not have to spend any time in hospital.

Lizzie and her piyo-piyo teether

Lizzie's first hairclip

That is, until the thing we worried about least, became a problem.
Last week she had very bad constipation.
Now I know this is supposed to be normal for babies, but she was straining so hard and bleed into her nappy, we got pretty anxious and worried.
We tried exercises, like bicycling her legs. We tried feeding her papaya, banana and prune juice. We gave her loads of water, and added extra water to her formula, still it did not budge.
Over two days she strained with blood, and towards the end, it must have been quite painful - she cried. Our girl is usually pretty strong, so it was a sign from her, that it was getting bad. So on Friday night I bought the liquid glycerine, and tried to administer it myself, but she was crying so hard, I was scared that I would make it worse, and there was more and more bleeding.

Finally we decided to take her to the NUH Children's A&E that night, and she was given a suppository, and oral lactulose. The bleeding was because of a tear, but the doc said she would be ok. She managed to ‘clear the blockage’ in the middle of the night – there we were, at 4am, Simon was holding her hands and legs, I was applying anaesthetic gel to her bum (as the doctor instructed) to ease the pain, and Lizzie strained till she was red in the face, with tears streaming down.

Lizzie still made it to church on Saturday -

here's Daddy making sure she drinks her water!

Ironically, next day she suffered a few rounds of diarrhoea with bleeding, but we were told this was to be expected. I guess it was the effects of the laxative.
The main concern right now, is that she is not dehydrated by the whole episode, as this could cause clogging of her shunt.
We are closely monitoring her – and current oxygen saturations are back up again at 78-82% Praise the Lord!

So in the meantime, we did some research as to what caused the ‘problem’ and found out that it could have something to do with her formula, Dumex, which contains palm oil. So we switched to Similac, which is supposedly makes it easier for babies to relieve themselves...... and we’re still waiting for the results.

Thanks everyone! especially our beloved ELIM CG for praying!
God Bless,
Elaine