Chan Legacy

2008.08.08

Supposedly a very good day, many people choosing to get hitched on this day; many parents choosing for their babies to be born on this day; Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony…

But on this day, we nearly lost Donald…. forever...

***

Daddy was discharged today from the hospital.  He insisted to send Oma home, together with Donald.  

Mummy was with Toria, taking a nap at home.  

When Daddy came back, he went to the pool instead, because Dr A said he should breath more fresh air instead of being in an aircon room.

Donald was with him, he was not dressed for a swim, so Daddy asked Donald to stay near to him.  

Daddy sat on the pool side chair and fell asleep.. the anesthetic effect has not totally worn off..

Donald was jumping and hopping around… and he fell into the main pool!

There were some people around at that time, but they were oblivious to what had happened!

At that moment, Daddy woke up!  (thank God!)

He looked around for Donald and thought Donald had gone home by himself…. He wanted to walk home to find Donald!

Just then, he saw Donald’s croc shoes floating on the water! By now, Donald was already in the middle of the pool.

He removed his blackberry… (amazing that he could actually think of that!) 

Dived into the pool and pulled Donald to safety.  

The two of them appeared at the door step, fully clothed but drenched.  

Daddy was frantic, talking away….

Donald was calm and composed…

***

Thank God!  Donald had started swim lessons, he knew how to hold his breathe, so at least he did not swallow water nor get water into his nose.  If he did, he would had been gone in a minute or two.

He didn’t panick, he told me he was just paddling his arms and legs.  (Children of his age have no concept of drowning…)

But still… he doesn’t yet know how to swim! He doesn’t know how to come back to the edge or come up for air!

Can you imagine if Daddy had continued in his sleep?

Can you imagine if Daddy didn’t notice his croc shoes and walked home?

Can you imagine?  Can you imagine?

The more we think about it, the more scared we are.  

How can we let this happen?  And all due to adult negligence?

At the same time, we are super thankful that God had decided it was not Donald’s time to go yet.

Donald didn’t seem to be affected much, but it was Daddy… he had nightmares after that incident.

This incident made me even more determined that Donald has to learn his water safety and swimming properly!  He must learn to turn back and hold the edge if he does fall in again… He must learn how to float on his back and wait for help! He must… he must!

***

And do you know what is the coincidence?

You know my friend, Carin, who has 2 sons, Ernesto and Emilio?  The one who owns Sol Playground Cafe Restaurant at Turf City?

Her son, Emilio nearly drowned too!  At another place, but on the same day and roughly the same time! around 4pm!

He had ventured accidentally into the deep end.  His mummy and another lady both dived in to grab him, his lips was purple by then….

Scary?  Lunar 7th Month?  I don’t know…

***

so 2008.08.08, good day?  I don’t think so…

Don’t play play… don’t ignore that loud, irregular snoring of your husband or yourself!

Daddy had been snoring for the longest time. For the past 4 years, the sound became unbearable and I had to wear ear plugs to sleep.  And recently I was doing regular ear candling, which I thought would clean out the ear wax pushed in by the ear plug… but I was wrong!  My ears became so so itchy, that I had to finally consult an ENT specialist, Dr Adrian. 

Apparently, the ear candle left candle wax deposits ON my ear drums and it became so encrusted that Dr Adrian had to suck them all out.  It was pretty scary to have the metal thingy sucking on your ear drum, quite deafening, but the relief it gave….awwwwww man….. (so conclusion… please DO NOT go for ear candling!)

Dr Adrian suggested that I bring Daddy in for a consult, because it is not just the snoring sound, he could be having breathing problems and affect his health in future.  So he did.  Initially quite defensive during the consult, he agreed to a sleep clinic test.  Someone came to our house and put a little machine on his arm, with a little tag on his chest and index finger.  He slept with it and they picked up the machine the next morning.

The next time we went for a consult, Dr A shared with us the results of the sleep test.

1. Daddy stopped breathing 46 times an hour!!!!  (anything more than 40 times is a severe case, daddy was super severe!)

2. His oxygen level dropped to 70%

3. His heart rate ranged from 38-111 beats/min, which is a light jog, which means his heart was working so hard to make him breath.  

4. His sleep efficiency is only 60%.  40% of the time he was in a “wake stage”

This confirmed my fear, because sometimes I do observe Daddy when he is sleeping, and he does stop breathing, sometimes for a whole minute!  But I wasn’t sure whether he stopped breathing or he was breathing shallowly.  Anyway, in the long run, it is bad for the heart and he might just stop breathing in his sleep for good!

Now Daddy is taken aback, he suddenly become very conscious about it, he mentioned that he woke up gasping for air when he was on overseas business trip, but he didn’t think much about it.  He opted for surgery, hoping it will make things better.

So 7th August 2008, he went for surgery and was warded for 1 night.  Procedures included:

1. Submucous reduction inferior turbinoplasty
- To reduce the size of the inferior turbinate, which protrudes from the sidewall of the nose. Large turbinates can cause nasal obstruction.

2. Septoplasty
- To straighten the septum, which is the wall inside your nose that separates one nostril from the other.

3. Adeniodectomy via nasoendoscopic approach
- To remove enlarged adenoids.

4. Tonsillectomy
- To remove tonsills.

5. Uvuloplatopharyngoplasty
- To remove excess tissue in the throat to make airway wider, for Daddy, it is the soft palate.

Daddy was on the 10th day of his 21 days fast when he went under the knife.  He initially refused to break fast, but his recovery was so slow and painful, that we literally had to force him to break his fast.  (But God was gracious, what he was fasting for did come to pass!  Thank you God!)

Because of his initial fasting, and also his lower tolerance of pain, it was a painful recovery for him.  He had adverse reactions to the painkillers and could not stop hiccuping and regurgitating, after 2 nights, he was warded into Mt E hospital again to be on drip and IV for painkillers.  He stayed for another 2 nights. After his discharge, he was hurting badly again.  It was so bad that every time he drink or eat, he was literally banging his head against the wall!  So we went back to the clinic and they put him on drip for antibiotics because he was having an infection.  He had to go to the clinic 3 times a day for the drip cos he didn’t want to stay in.

Hiaz… it was so bad that he said to me that if he knew it was going to be so painful, he wouldn’t have opted for surgery.  It got to a point where he blamed me for making him go through all these.  (*sigh*  Darling… not for me, I don’t mind continuing with my ear plugs, but it is for your long term health lah!!!)

But it is true, what has always been said… “Even this shall pass…”  After suffering for 8 days, suddenly on the 9th day, the pain subsided from a scale of 10/10 to 6/10, and rapidly got better and better.  After 2 weeks of MC, Daddy returned to work.

Well, he is still snoring, but at least I can observe that it is regular snoring, with very very few episodes of respiratory disturbances.  He is still due for his follow up consult and I think we should do a sleep clinic test again to check.  Let’s pray and hope that he gets better.

Nope, I do not have super memory, but I do make it a point to take down notes using my blackberry.

So here are some milestones of our darling Victoria from way back in Nov 2007….

14 months
* Shadow discovery
- Toria was intrigued with her shadow on the wall, she tried to pat at the shadow, walked about while observing the shadow, then finally realised what is happening, and made different hand movements to see the effect.
* very clearly vocalize “I want that”
* Winked
* Ask for food
* Right 2nd tooth (10/12/07)
* Weigh 9.3kg, 77cm (17/12/07)

15th Month
* Left 2nd tooth (2/1/08)
* Weigh 9.678kg 77cm (8/1/08)
* Upper left tooth, then upper right tooth (21/1/08)

16th Month
* 11th and 12th teeth (week of 18/02/08)

18th Month
* wean off breasts
* Weigh 9.3kg (28/3/08)

19th Month
* Weigh 10.04kg (28/4/08)

20th Month
* walk up and down staircases without help (31/5/08)

21st Month
* Weigh 11.2kg, 86cm (30/6/08)

23rd Month
* Weigh 11.6kg (18/8/08)
* can gurgle and spit when brushing teeth.
 
Here are some other things I noted with no reference to dates.

Language
* Toria seems to be more receptive to repeat Mandarin words compared to English ones.
* She can say “还要” if she wants some more, but she doesn’t know how to say “不要”, so if she doesn’t want it anymore, she will say “还要 don’t want”!
* She loves to say “我爱你”, it sounds more like “oh ai ni!”
* Can’t pronounce consonant “G” yet, so everything with G, she will replace with D or B.
e.g. Instead of calling Donald “Gor Gor”, she will say “Dor Dor”, so now she gave up, calls him “Donald” instead.
Gu Gu is “do do”, Ah Gu is ah do.
西瓜 (xi gua) is now Xi Bah (sounds like zebra)
饼干 (bing gan) is now Bing Dan

Food
* drinks more water
* Eats more food
* More adventurous with food, gets upset with us if we never offer her our food
* prefers chicken over pork (donald is the other way round)
* loves banana, watermelon, honeydew, jambu, guava… (donald only eats banana)
* both of them LOVES soup
 
Others
* since I massage her almost every night, she knows how to massage back, her fingers know how to knead my shoulders very very nicely!
* Only like to touch my tummy when she wants to sleep.

Some Updates on Donald

- 4.5 years old, he weighs 17.7kg (18/8/08)

- His favorite numbers are 5 and 1

- His favorite letters are O and B

Mandarin

- Can recite 唐诗 - 李白 的 静夜思

- Currently attending Berries (百力果), and this happened just after 3 lessons

One Saturday evening, we went to Amara’s Food court for Korean Food.  As it was the weekend, the food court was pretty empty.  

Donald looked around and turned to me and said “san san liang liang“, in an “ang moh” accent.

I was like “huh?“.

“San san liang liang, Mummy! See, not many people… san san liang liang!“

Oh… then I realised…”三三两两!” LOL!

He was using 成语!  Even though I know this 成语, I hardly use it!  Daddy don’t even know this 成语!  Well done Donald!

Funny Incident

After piano class one day, we had lunch at Waffletown.  We sat outside and there was a fly flying around.  As I needed to go to the counter to get another straw, I asked Donald to help me watch the food.

When I came back, guess what I saw?  Donald was WATCHING the food intently!  A fly came and landed on my food and flew away, but all Donald did was WATCH the food!  He didn’t even attempt to swipe at the fly!  I was bowled over… laughed my head off! Sat down and had to explain to him exactly what I meant. hee hee hee!  So cute!

Growing Up

A while back, Donald was really “sticky”,  if I went out with Daddy for too long, he would complain over the phone

“Mummy, ask Daddy don’t bring you out!”

“Can you drive really really fast because I miss you?”

If I went to the toilet for a pee without informing him, he would complain

“Mummy, you cannot go to the toilet when you want to go to the toilet!”

Now…

He does not want to share straw, utensils etc with anyone anymore,  because he does not want other people’s saliva. He said because he is not a baby anymore, he is a big boy now!

We can’t kiss him unless he allows it, and only on his cheek and he will wipe it away after we kiss him.

Today is the Parent Chat Session cum Group Photo Taking.

Had a mini gathering…Sherrie couldn’t make it. �We celebrated both Joanne and my birthday, poor Carol had to foot the entire bill! �(Sorry Carol! �Sherrie… you were suppose to come and bear half! hahahaha!)

Of cos, there was another item being celebrated… Carol is pregnant! �The moment she found out, she sms me “wow! Your prayer board is POWERFUL!”. �Why? �Recall my old post where all 3 of us wrote our prayer requests on my prayer board? �I got my answer, now Carol got her answer. �Let’s pray really hard for Joanne!

One mummy (thanks Melissa!) from the asiaparents forum, was clearing out some old toys. �She posted in the forum that she was selling this toy that is like a baby changing station. �I asked her for photos of it, and when I saw it, I immediately knew that this toy is not from Singapore, cos I had never seen something like that. �All the baby toys sold here are�separate, e.g. a�separate�bath tub, a�separate�baby chair etc. �This toy nicely incorporated a bathtub, a changing station, a sitting area for feeding, cupboards etc into 1 nice unit! �So I immediately confirm that I would be buying it off her. �Turns out this toy was from Australia. �We took it home, took it apart and wash it sparkling clean! �Look at the pictures… see how both Donald and Toria is enjoying it? �After that, take a guess how much I paid for it? �The answer is at the bottom of this post.

I paid…… SGD10!

My little girl…..

Previously I posted on how Donald would use Toria as a sticker book and paste all his stickers on her. �Now Toria “self mutilate”. LOL! �She pasted all the stickers all over herself. �Her arms, her legs, her face and apparently enjoying herself! �When we presented her another set of stickers, which is Hello Kitty, she wanted to paste that on her instead, so she started peeling off the old ones and while doing that, she mumbled “pain…pain…” to herself. �LOL! �Too young for waxing isn’t it?

hmm…. Toria taking after one of Mummy’s traits, the love for bags. �Even though these 3 favorite are almost all that she has right now, she hung all of them around her neck and shoulder and paraded around the house. �When we go out, she would demand to bring all 3 along, it will take a lot of persuasion from us to leave them at home.�

Well, the last scan, we thought our Chan Junior 3 is a boy, but today’s scan, Dr Chin said it’s a girl! It must have been the umbilical cord we saw the last time.

But our dear Donald was super sure that it’s a brother. He had been telling his teachers in school that it is a baby brother. When we told him that it is going to a Mei Mei, he pointed to Toria and said “No, Mei Mei already came out what???” (what logic! :D) And he insisted “It is a Di Di lah! I tell you! Wait until the baby comes out!”. LOL!

Mummy turned 32 today. I took the time to really pamper myself today.

First, I went to Afond Spa for a body scrub and pre-natal massage, for 2 whole hours….

Then I went to The Salon at Wheelock place for a haircut and color treatment, manicure and pedicure… for 3 hours…

Then I had dinner with Daddy at the Ship restaurant.

This is also the 10th time I celebrated my birthday with Daddy. I must say that it is one of the sweetest one I can remember. Several reasons…

Daddy had been extremely sweet, attentive and appreciative recently, I guess it is because he saw what I have to go through to bear him a child. Everytime after I vomit, my swollen eyes would be tearing, I would be out of breathe and complaining, he would give me a big hug and say “poor thing…”

He made sure he flew back from his business trip for my birthday and what’s more…because of some breakthrough he is praying for at work, he decided to go on a 21 days fast. Today is his 5th day, and I know that he is struggling, but he still accompanied me to The Ship for a birthday dinner, watching me eat my steak while he go hungry.

Daddy also bought me roses.

We then had the birthday cake late at night, about 930pm, cos we waited for Gu Gu to come over. Donald was digging away at the chocolate, Toria watched and…. she followed suit! So difficult to keep their fingers off! Next year we will have 3 kids helping to blow the candles out!

Every alternate Thursdays, Sherrie and I would bring the kids with us to the Hot Mamas’ Cellgroup in the east.� So on the other alternate thusdays when we are free, we will try to arrange for a playdate either at her place or mine.

This week, they came over and the kids had a wild time!� What’s even nicer was that Sherrie bought me a birthday cake from LANA cake shop!� Since we were all full to the brim, Sherrie was kind enough to let me preserve the cake, after the candle blowing, for my actual birthday tomorrow.� Very nice coincidence, cos I had also ordered the exact same cake from LANA for pickup tomorrow, so I cancelled that instead.� I was still grumbling to myself that I had to order my own birthday cake cos my hubby was overseas and will not be back till tomorrow.� So� GOOD TIMING Sherrie!� Thanks and Muack!

Again… inherited Daddy’s soup gulping trait…

“This is the way I attack my soup…hee hee hee”

When we went to Pst Ming’s house for cellgroup, they had a little Hello Kitty dollhouse there and to my surprise, Donald enjoyed playing with it tremendously. I was actually considering getting a BIG dollhouse for them when they are a little bigger, but since this one is small and so I thought “why not?”, then I can see whether their interest sustains them before I go and invest in a big dollhouse.

So I did, paid about $30 i think, from Robinsons, and they really enjoyed it! But do watch out for the little toys if they are on the floor, they hurt your feet like MAD if you step on them!

Every pregnancy, I have to bitch about this. I HATE the vomitting! AND the excessive saliva!

It is exactly these that makes me want to stop at 3. I had actually forgotten about these pain in the a** and gotten myself pregnant. Please…for goodness sake, remind me of these 2 factors when I start having crazy ideas of wanting to go for no.4!

First, the excessive saliva. I simply can’t swallow them! It will cause me to throw up! For my 2nd pregnancy, I dabbed salt on my tongue to help me swallow my saliva each time, but this "trick" didnt work for this pregnancy! The more salt i dabbed, the more I wanted to vomit! So my alternatives are rotated between taking small sips of water to help me swallow and spitting the saliva into my little "spittum", a little plastic cup lined with plastic bag and tissue paper. Some friends found it disgusting and asked me why can’t I just swallow my saliva…. sigh… you try lah! You think I don’t want? This excessive spitting is causing my throat to be so dry and red. I went to see TCM for some medicine, still didn’t quite help to eliminate the problem.

I also have heartburns. Different people experienced it differently. Mine is more like gas stuck in the throat, at the soft spot between the collar bone and it burns me while I try hard to burp the gas out. Struggled with it for my first two pregnancies, but this time, I found something that works for me… Whenever I experience it, I will drink gassy drinks like 7up. The drink makes me burp anyway, so helps to bring up the "stuck gas" more easily so it doesn’t hurt that much.

And the worst? Vomitting!

Yesterday, I actually saw STARS after I vomitted! After the episode, I sat down and actually saw tiny flickers in front of me, like tiny tiny silver bugs or stars zooming around and zooming away from me. This is the 1st time I literally experienced "seeing stars" as it is said. And I swear I vomitted some blood along with the crap! It was pinkish and super painful!

When I was at the hospital with Daddy for his op (that’s a whole other post ), his ward was right at the end of the corridor, quite a distance away from the nurse station at the beginning of the ward. I had a vomitting episode in a closed bathroom and afterwards when I walked to the nursing station, guess what? The nurses there asked me if I was ok? I looked at them, puzzled, and asked," what do you mean?". They replied "We heard you vomitting. It was so loud and bad that we thought it was one of our patients!"! OMG! Was it that loud?

Tell you what’s the worst. Vomitting FOOD. If you drink lots of water, even if you vomit solid food, it comes out quite easily with the fluid. Pure fluid is even better…easy job. But when you haven’t been drinking much fluids… and you vomit almost just the food, it is HORRIBLE! No fluids to help push it out fast, it gets stuck in your throat, pieces and pieces of food, Can’t swallow! Can’t throw it up! It is the worst feeling. And the FORCE of your body trying to get it out of your system is so strong that I can almost literally feel my eye balls about to fall out! And usually some urine will leak out as well. And the proof of the force of it? You can see the pictures below. Those are NOT freckles, those are tiny blood capillaries or blood vessels around my eyes bursting (I didn’t study biology, so don’t kill me if i used the wrong term ), causing what I termed myself "blood freckles". In the beginning, when my lower face is covered with acne and my upper face was covered with "blood freckles", you can imagine how hideous I looked!

At least now I am pretty much halfway there, and God has been good.  He has put me in contact with people who had it worse than me.  People like my church friends and even Diana Ser, whose son is in the same JG class as Toria.  They shared with me how they had to be on drip, confined to bed, vomitting every 20 minutes and not being able to even swallow a sip of water.  And that IS bad.

I have also spoken to my TCM doctor, she said if I come see her during my confinement days and take herbs/medicine to regulate my body properly, I should be able to 根治 my problem (ie solve it from the root) and maybe I would not face these problems again for my 4th pregnancy.  Well, at least there is some light at the end of the tunnel…

Wait for all the pictures to load, and do a fast forward and you will be able to see the entire sequence of Toria putting on her pants!

Most of the time she gets 2 legs into 1 hole, but no matter what, she insists on doing it by herself.  We are only allowed to help her wear her top and diaper.  Well done girl!

This is Donald’s version of an alien. Very cute alien, I must say!

Julia Gabriel’s Mandarin Playclub. They rotate the outdoor play weekly. Playground… waterplay, swim, sand play… You can also see pictures of the teachers, Teacher Jiang and Teacher Deng, 2 of the 3 current teachers teaching Toria’s class.