Post-mid year life review.

This year has been nothing short of trying.

When the year started I was excited to embark on a new job, but 3 days into it, my unborn son decided to start making his exit from my womb. He was only at 35+5 weeks then and apparently I was having strong and regular contractions that warranted a 2-night hospital stay and 2 steroid jabs to my thighs that hurt like a mofo. They hurt worse than the actual process of giving birth, that’s for sure. Painful as it was, I just kept telling myself that it’s for good of the baby (to help mature his lungs in case he decided to push through and get delivered that day itself).

Mind over matter, I told myself, in between cries of pain and clutching my legs. Thank God that episode and the whole stay plus all the pills I had to take helped keep the baby inside for 2 weeks longer, and our little son arrived in the world on 16 January. We named him Azil because it means “protector, guardian, one who prevents bad things from happening to people” and these are the qualities that we hope he would have, especially when protecting his sister.

The period of maternity leave after that was nothing short of awesome. I spent my days at my mother’s and my nights at home, because trying to breastfeed an infant with a 2-year-old clinging onto you (and probably crying for attention) is not fun. Being at my mom’s I got to interact with both babies without the guilt of neglecting the other child. I’m eternally grateful to my mom and sister for accommodating us and taking care of us.

With this second baby I readjusted to life pretty quickly, having had experience from handling the first baby. I could just remember being so scared of handling Aleeza that I asked Adam to do basically everything except feed her. Both babies also had a different breastfeeding journey BUT they both had jaundice.

This neonatal jaundice that they both had was the worst type that can’t be helped either way. It’s called ABO incompatible jaundice and occurs when the mother (me) is type O and the baby is type A, B (both babies), or AB. Both of them have Adam’s blood. Both! They both had to be warded (after a day of having them at home can you imagine the sadness we felt?) for a day or two and placed under UV light to get rid of the excess bilirubin in their systems.

With Aleeza it seemed to dissipate quicker than it did with Azil. I think it took her about 3 weeks to be clear of jaundice while with Azil it took about 5 weeks. But somehow even though we’ve been through it before I was more devastated when Azil consistently couldn’t clear his jaundice checks at the polyclinic. Can you imagine establishing a good breastfeeding routine with your baby and he’s peeing well but his bilirubin levels only went down by 1 count over the course of 7 days? I was so upset I remember snapping at Aleeza. That evening itself, Adam found out that we could rent our own biliblanket from Jaundice Therapy for 3D2N to treat the jaundice on our own at home. We were apprehensive at first because neither of us are healthcare professionals and we couldn’t find other reviews of the biliblanket in Singapore. It’s apparently more widely used in the US and stated as being safe for home-use. We decided to go ahead anyway because if we don’t try, we won’t know.

After using the biliblanket, Azil’s skin became noticeably less yellow and he was pooping more. He cleared his jaundice checks about a week and a half later I think. Makes me wonder if we should just rent the biliblanket if the next baby has type B blood instead of warding the baby. But we’ll cross that hurdle when we get there.

Amidst all this jaundice-induced worry we were still worried about Azil’s hearing condition. At birth he was tested to have borderline passed his hearing test for his right ear and failed for his left. I was SO convinced it was due to fluid in his ears and would clear up in a few months’ time so I didn’t think much about it… until his 1 month check at the ENT Centre at KKH.

They repeated the tests with the same results which prompted the doctor to schedule us for a detailed ERA/SSEP test in June where he would be sedated and tested while his brain waves were being monitored.

And when the doctor confirmed that he has mild-moderate hearing loss in both ears I honestly couldn’t believe it. She said he’d have to be fitted with hearing aids at 6 months so that his language acquisition skills wouldn’t be impeded. She said all these things that I honestly heard in muffled voices because I was so devastated. I kept thinking, the poor little baby… this is a lifelong impairment that he’d have to deal with. But I thank God that it’s only mild-moderate and nothing worse. And that at the very least, is “correctable”.

At this point were were just down and wanted to spend time with the kids so Adam took leave the next day. We were going to bring the kids out sightseeing/playing and just as we were about to get ready, Aleeza slipped while climbing onto the side of the bed and her whole body fell on her arm, breaking both bones. I screamed for Adam to get out of the toilet and we rushed to KKH.

It’s terribly traumatic having to look at your child in such pain. Especially when the medical professionals have to squirt fentanyl into her nose to relieve the pain while they pull and massage her bones straight and you can’t be there to hold her hand. In the meantime, she’s screaming at the top of her lungs for you to come to her and hug her. We ended up spending the whole day at the hospital and she finally went home with her cast. (Sidenote: Adam sent me this article a couple days ago that freaked me out.)

So there we were, trying to get her used to her cast, enduring her screams of pain every night. We didn’t know it at the time but a friend told us that when he broke his arm in primary school he was screaming every night too because the pain was so unbearable. We just thought she thought she had a foreign object weighing her arm down. Oops.

Two days later on a Thursday we received some awful news that my aunt had fallen the night before, tearing her shin and exposing her bone. I was crying when I got the news because my aunt had lupus her whole life and now she had to endure this pain, and who knows what would happen after that at that point in time. Adam asked me whether I wanted to go see her at Ng Teng Fong Hospital and I shrugged it off initially, thinking that I’d visit her another day when she’s better. Thank God he said “Let’s just go,” and off we went to the hospital.

We brought the kids but didn’t bring them to her ward, thinking they might be a nuisance to the other warded ladies. Spent about half an hour to 45 minutes talking with my aunt, assisting her with her lunch. She made some jokes as usual. Told me to sit down and stop standing on ceremony. Everything seemed normal and I stopped being on edge.

She was fine… my parents visited her a couple more times after. Apparently she was still active on Facebook on Saturday night. But on Sunday morning she completely crashed. It was the worst news we received yet. We received messages from the family that she had a lung infection and was moved to the ICU. On Monday we went to visit her and it was the saddest most heartbreaking thing to see her intubated, sedated, and wired up to so much equipment. She could only respond by squeezing my uncle’s hand when he asked whether she could hear him. Everyone prayed for her.

We visited every day after that except for Friday because I had to work then send Azil for his vaccination appointment. Sometime in the middle of the week she seemed to be getting better and hopes were brought up. But then on Friday the situation was worse and the doctors told us to brace ourselves for the worst. We came again on Saturday and stayed till 5, just praying that God will do what’s best for her. It was so heartbreaking watching my cousins and uncle go through this because I really can’t imagine the day it might happen to us.

An hour and a half after leaving the hospital and settling at home preparing for breaking our fast, my mom texted that “She has left us.” Getting that message and not being with my mom to hug her tight was so painful.

The next day was Eid and we spent the first half at my aunt’s funeral, supporting each other emotionally. Nobody was in the mood for celebrating. It was especially saddening to see my uncle cry. It’s been a month since and I still feel heavy-hearted when I think about my aunt. And I keep having this need to see her face, so I scour Facebook for her pictures, and ending up crying in the end.

I told my mom we need to take more pictures together, especially with both my parents and the kids. But my mom hates looking at her own photos so she refuses to take them. Making a mental note to force her to take more photos.

In addition to all these, we’ve also had some work-related hiccups to do with money and bonuses, but in light of everything that has happened to us over the past 7 months, I just want to look at the bright side of things – we have a roof over our heads and jobs that pay enough for us to live comfortably. The best thing that has happened to us this year so far is no doubt the arrival of our baby boy. He brings us such joy with his generous smiles! He’s such a smiley baby that even his sister loves him so much too. I’m really thankful for having such a supportive family and for the joys our children bring us.

There are still 5 more months in the year left to go and I’m determined not to let them let us down