SINGAPORE \u2013 When Thinesh Edward Balasingam saw his wife Xiao Hui come out of the bedroom in June 2022, he stopped in his tracks. She looked drowsy and deathly pale.<\/p>\n
Her Apple Watch sounded an alarm as her pulse had dropped to about 37 beats a minute, below the normal range of 60 to 100.<\/p>\n
Two days earlier, she had been discharged after delivering their son, Skanda, through an emergency C-section after 48 hours of labour.<\/p>\n
As Xiao rushed back to KK Women\u2019s and Children\u2019s Hospital (KKH), her place of delivery, in a taxi, Thinesh stayed home with their newborn and two older children, then aged nine and seven.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, Xiao had post-partum preeclampsia, a rare condition in which a mother has high blood pressure and excess protein in her urine soon after childbirth, which can cause seizures and serious complications if left untreated.<\/p>\n
Thinesh, who was on two weeks\u2019 paternity leave, held the fort while Xiao was hospitalised for about seven days.<\/p>\n
In addition to training the helper they had hired, he collected the breast milk that his wife pumped every day and fed it to their newborn.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still don\u2019t know how I managed it, but my wife guided me on how to do some things. Her friends and mine also supported me through that tough period,\u201d says Thinesh, 46, an advanced practice nurse from Singapore General Hospital. Xiao, 43, also a nurse, works at a polyclinic.<\/p>\n Thinesh, who was on two weeks\u2019 paternity leave, held the fort while Xiao was hospitalised for about seven days in 2022.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n This was not the first time Thinesh has stepped up for his family.<\/p>\n Their eldest child, Krish, suffered from allergies, eczema and asthma as a baby.<\/p>\n He had breathing difficulties from about six months old, and would be hospitalised for three to four days every three months, until he was about three years old. This was later diagnosed as asthma.<\/p>\n Xiao and Thinesh took turns to care for him, until they ran out of annual leave and had to hire a helper.<\/p>\n In June 2015, Krish and Xiao were admitted to KKH at the same time \u2013 the toddler for an asthmatic attack and Xiao, then heavily pregnant with second child Adwita, for an insufficient water level in her uterus.<\/p>\n Thinesh ended up shuttling between the hospital\u2019s women\u2019s tower and children\u2019s tower to visit both, and took Krish down to the common area so that Xiao could see and hold her son.<\/p>\n At night, he would sleep in the boy\u2019s room before leaving for work the next morning.<\/p>\n Thinesh, Xiao and their children at home.<\/p>\n ST PHOTO: LIM YAOHUI<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n \u201cNursing teaches us to be calm when the situation is very bad. Only then can you manage well,\u201d Thinesh says.<\/p>\n Having outgrown his childhood medical conditions, Krish, now 13, is fast catching up to his father\u2019s height.<\/p>\n He and his sister, Adwita, 11, gamely pose for the camera, while the baby of the family, four-year-old Skanda, flashes a shy smile.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m happy to see them growing up. Life is a cycle, there are ups and downs, and you have to pull through,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Xiao says of her husband: \u201cWhenever we need it, he\u2019s there for us. He will never complain that he\u2019s tired.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 When Thinesh Edward Balasingam saw his wife Xiao Hui come out of the bedroom in June 2022, he stopped in his tracks. She…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":62388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/62388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/picture><\/div>
<\/picture><\/div>
\n
\n
Read Full Article At Source <\/a>
\n