Category Archive: Cassandra

Yoghurt Drink The Latest Rage

My 2 older girls’ latest rage is fruit flavored yoghurt drinks. They have cut down their milk intake from thrice a day to only once a day about a year ago. Except for Sherilyn who will only drink if her milk is chocolate flavored, Alycia now loathes the sight of milk, except for the occasional fresh milk (which she likes only 1 particular brand). To ensure that they get enough calcium, I ensure that they eat enough green leafy vegetables, tofu, soy bean products, calcium-added multi-vitamins, yoghurt, cheese and yoghurt drinks from Dutch Lady, Nestle, Yakult, Vitagen, Calciyum.

Even Baby loves yoghurt drinks. In this picture, you’ll notice that her right eye is still a tad red, as it was the 2nd day post Chalazion eye surgery.


Dutch Lady Shine 0% fat yoghurt drink – this is our favorite fruit-flavored yoghurt drink from Dutch Lady. I don’t think it’s 0% fat-free.  Anything that’s laden with sugar is fattening, right?   I find it pretty expensive though and I will only splurge on a bottle or two once a week, something as a treat for the girls.

Share Button
post by admin | | 2

Bug, Bug Go Away

Today is the first day that Sherilyn and Baby are showing the first signs of a cold.  It all started about a week ago when a friend who had her first signs of cold came to our house.  She played with the girls and got very near the girls.   The 6 days incubation period is up today and the first few symptoms showed up.  This morning, Sherilyn’s voice changed a little, her nose was stuffy and she started to cough a little too.  Baby was a little cranky, her goo is yellowish and she threw up a lot of phlegm while having her lunch today.   Well, dealing with a flu is nothing new to me.  After being a mother for almost 7 years, I am now better prepared in dealing with it.  I will try to stay away from the doctor as far as possible.  Antibiotics will only weaken the body and causes it to be resistant to it.  I have already fished out my trustworthy Esberitox and Echinacea tabs and have started feeding Sherilyn and Baby with it.  For Baby, I crushed the Esberitox and Echinacea in a pill crusher and added the powder into her drinks.   Praying hard that their body will be strong enough to battle with the bugs.

Share Button

Psyllium Husk To Relief Baby’s Constipation

I have been feeding psyllium husk to Baby for over 2 weeks to relief her constipation and it’s working.  She can now move her bowels almost everyday and her stools are no longer rock hard.  I am going to continue feeding her with psyllium husk and only plan to stop feeding her with it when she learns to eat fruits.  This child of mine does not like fruits and it’s a torture to get her to swallow fruits.  She will chew any fruit given to her but will spit everything out minutes later.  She is also starting to reject green leafy veggie.  She once loved green leafy veggie but now she will single out all the green stuff in her bowl of food.  The only veggie she loves now is cherry tomatoes, though they may sometimes taste sour.  She can easily chomp down 10 small cherry tomatoes in a sitting.


Share Button

5 Hours Post Eye Surgery

This is Baby about 5 hours after her Chalazion eye surgery on Thursday. She recovered pretty well this time – no vomiting and no post-op grogginess.  She slept for about 2 hours after the surgery coz that was her usual nap time and she had woken up very early that day to get ready to go to the eye centre.  She wasn’t crabby and wasn’t in pain either.  Thank God for that!

When she got back from the eye centre after the surgery, she was already back to her usual self – jumping and climbing like a monkey, crawling under the table and driving me up the wall. But that’s ok. I thank God that He had brought Baby back to me safely for the 3rd time. Yes, this is her 3rd surgery in less than a year.


Eating Cheerios under the table. Baby survived on Cheerios, mummy’s milkie, a little soy bean milk and a little formula milk on that day. She appetite was pathetic that day.

Share Button

Baby’s Eye Chalazion Surgery

My hubs and I almost choked on the surgery bill on Thursday. The Chalazion surgery, which is a very minor surgery only took 5 minutes. The ophthalmologist removed a lot of pus and other jelly-like liquid from under Baby’s eyelid. Though the surgery was minor and short, it was a choking, whopping close to RM2k bill!!


This is Baby, minutes after the Chalazion surgery.  I thank God that Baby did not complain of any pain after the surgery.   No oral antibiotics were prescribed, only an eye drop for the eye, which has to be dropped onto the eye 4x a day for a week.   The bandaged was removed before she was discharged from daycare at the eye specialist centre.  No bandage was needed thereafter, though there was a little watery blood oozing out from under the eye where the incision was made.

Share Button

Baby’s Eye Chalazion Surgery

This is Baby about 2 hours post surgery yesterday. In this picture, she was pointing to daddy’s Big Mac bun. On normal days, she would push the rather bland sesame bun away but yesterday, she was really famished! She just stuffed the bun into her mouth and with the bun still in her mouth, she was asking for more.  However, she did not appear thirsty though.  I had expected her to chug down a gallon of water when she could finally drink but I was wrong.  She only wanted my milkie.  My helper and I had to force her drink lots of fluids. I was also worried that the lack of fluids in her body will pave way for the pesky bacteria to wreck havoc in her urinary system again. Sigh…. this child of mine has so many health issues!

Share Button

Baby Has Eye Chalazion And Needs A Minor Operation

Remember my earlier post on the swollen bump under Baby’s right eyelid? It has turned bigger plus it looks like there is pus inside the boil / stye. Yesterday we brought Baby to our regular paed and he has referred us to an ophthalmologist. He told us that a minor surgery may be required to remove the pus inside the boil like stye.

We had just returned from our appointment with the ophthalmologist at ISEC. He did an eye examination on Baby and told us that she has a condition called Chalazion. A chalazion is a lump of the lid that is caused by obstruction of an oil gland within the upper or lower eyelid. This lump may increase in size over days to weeks and may occasionally become red, warm, or painful.

The gland involved in the formation of a chalazion is a modified oil gland that lies within the eyelid. There are about 40 of these glands within each of the upper and lower lids. These glands secrete oil into the tears. When one of these glands becomes blocked, it can increase in size and cause a visible lump.

So the treatment is that Baby has to undergo a minor operation and we were actually prepared / expected to hear that from the doctor. It is going to be a very minor operation which lasts about 5 minutes. However, it sounds major as Baby has to be given GA (gas) and completed knocked out. This will be Baby’s third surgery in a year! Poor baby! Though we were told that there would be very little pain after the operation, I am still worried. My poor baby… and poor me for I have to relive the nightmare of putting Baby on the OT table again for the 3rd time! Please pray that all will go well tomorrow morning without any complication. And please pray that this time our insurer will reimburse us this bill.  Our insurer did not reimburse our claims totaling to almost RM60k incurred during Baby’s surgeries last year. It’s going to cost us a whopping RM1k++ for this eye surgery this time!

Share Button

Beating The Constipation

Baby’s paed and surgeon had warned us many times that one of the causes of UTI is constipation. Constipation will put pressure on the bladder and the unmoved wastes in the guts contain bacteria. Thus it’s very important that she moves her bowels everyday. Unfortunately, Baby has been suffering from constipation for the past few months. I suspect that this is one of the causes of the bacteria in her urine lately. I would not say that she had a UTI coz she has no fever, no vomiting and is well. Only her urine looked cloudy and smelled foul.

Last week when we brought Baby to the paed, he prescribed her with these stuff to help regulate Baby’s bowel movement:

Restore probiotics (which is freaking costly!), Lactulose syrup, Novalac formula for constipated toddlers and enema.  So far, I have not used this enema on Baby.  I have been feeding Baby with psyllium husk twice a day (1/2 teaspoon each time) and thank God, her bowel movement is quite regular now. I may continue Baby on Novalac (skimmed cow’s milk) since she is accepting it quite well.

Share Button

Baby’s Swollen Eye

First, Baby’s right eye was reddish. The same day the eye turned reddish, she had a fall from the chair and landed face down on the cold hard floor. The lower right eye (the part that’s above the cheek and just below the eyes) hit the floor. It was bruised. Several days later, there was a bump on that part. Several days later after my mil cleaned that part with warm water + sea salt, it became red. It looked as if there’s pus inside the bump. I had asked our paed if it’s pus-filled but he said it does not look like it as there is no ‘boil head’.  Since yesterday, the bump looked as though it’s going to erupt.

I wonder what caused the boil-like bump. Is it caused by blood clot resulting from the fall or from an infection of the eye?

We will bring Baby to the paed’s office if the bump is still red, hard and appears as if the pus is trying to find its way out.  Check out the red hard bump under Baby’s right eye.  It looks painful but when we asked her if it’s “pain pain”, she said no.

Share Button

4Life Transfer Factor

Last week, one of my blog readers read about my post in my kids’ blog that there’s bacteria in Baby’s urine again. She has been one of my loyal silent readers and my customer too. She was so concerned for Baby that she offered to send me a health supplement so that I can try it on Baby, in the hope that it would strengthen her immune system, thus preventing further urinary tract infections.

Here’s the supplement that she had given Baby as a gift of love:


It’s a 4Life Transfer Factor Advanced Formula supplement consisting of cow’s colostrum and egg yolk.

I have been feeding Baby 1 capsule (in powder form) 2-3x a day. Ever since she took this supplement, her urine has been clear. It may be coincidental that the supplement is working in clearing her urine as I have also been feeding Baby with lots of Chinese herbal water meant for clearing the urinary tract system as well as Echinacea (a herb that has potent infection fighting properties).

I am now better prepared if ever Baby gets another foul-smelling pee.   After this latest suspected UTI attack with foul-smelling and cloudy pee, I now know that continuously feeding her with LOTS of fluids (coconut water, chinese urinary tract clearing herbs, barley water, plain water, Refresh) and Echinacea will have a high chance of flushing out all the pesky bacteria out from her urinary tract system.  I also double up the dosage of Waterfall D-Mannose and feed her 1/2 a teaspoon every 3 hourly.


Share Button