Shanle's First High Fever

The past two days and nights have been a torture for Irene and I as Shanle battled his first viral fever. The fever started on Sunday evening with his body temperature hovering slight above 37 deg C. On Monday morning, Shanle began to feel feverish with temperature readings crossing 38 deg C. His mother has to take urgent leave to bring him to see a doctor and tend to him. He was given panadol to be taken thrice a day after food. However, Shanle's temperature continue to rise and on Tuesday morning around 3am, the reading was 39.2 deg C. Red Alert! We quickly wrapped him up and rushed off to Thomson Medical Centre. By the time the doctor saw him, his temperature has hit 40 deg C. The doctor prescribed Nurofen syrup to bring down the fever and asked the nurse to sponge Shanle. Here's a short clip taken with Irene's Nokia 6280.



The nurses at TMC are very experienced and helpful. One of them also imparted some very important tips in managing feverish infants to new parents like us.

• Tip 1 - Do not feed the medicine immediately before or after milk or water. Otherwise, the baby will throw up the medicine along with everything else.
• Tip 2 - The fever will go down during the day and up again in the night. For the next two days, we must continue to feed panadol every 4-6hrs in the day and 4 hourly after 5pm, regardless if the fever has subsided or not. Coupled with Nurofen every six hourly at night, the fever should be put under control.
• Tip 3 - Let the baby wear loose clothing and sleep in an air-conditioned room.
• Tip 4 - Sponge the baby with room temp water during the day and lukewarm water in the night.

These tips are very useful indeed and Shanle's body temperature has not crossed the 38.5 deg C mark since Tuesday morning. We followed all the tips closely except tip 4 which we replaced with my Mum's traditional remedy using rice wine to rub the forehead, arm pits and other hotspots. Shanle's fever has weaned off but he's still coughing slightly. We brought Shanle to TMC again on Wednesday early morning about 3am when he cried non-stop and was in cold sweat. It's colic pain caused by excessive wind in his stomach and the doctor prescribed another set of medicine for Shanle. Unfortunately for us, our boy hates the taste of medicine, even though they are made to taste sweet. Every feed is a torturing time for him and heartaching time for us. Anyway, we got one more day to go and if the fever does not come back, we can stop the fever medicine. On the whole, I am quite satisfied with the treatment given by TMC so far.