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22-10-2024, 07:09 AM
SINGAPORE – Sugar and spice, & all things nice – Madam Felicia Tan thought little girls were made of when her daughter Elvia Lim was born in 2019.
“My firstborn, a boy, cried throughout night. Elvia was different. She smelled as sweet as maple syrup. She hardly cried and always slept,” the 36-year-old housewife said, telling The Straits Times that she was blessed to have a baby girl who was naturally this way.
What Madam Tan did not know was that her daughter’s sweet fragrance hid a sinister underlying condition. She noticed that Elvia, at a week old, was not drinking enough breast milk. Concerned, she contacted Thomson Medical, where she had given birth. “I thought issue was mine, so I made an appointment with the lactation consultant & brought her along,” Madam Tan said.
The lactation nurse told the parents to rush the newborn to the emergency department at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Elvia was taken to the intensive care unit after she was diagnosed with maple syrup urine disease (MSUD).
“My firstborn, a boy, cried throughout night. Elvia was different. She smelled as sweet as maple syrup. She hardly cried and always slept,” the 36-year-old housewife said, telling The Straits Times that she was blessed to have a baby girl who was naturally this way.
What Madam Tan did not know was that her daughter’s sweet fragrance hid a sinister underlying condition. She noticed that Elvia, at a week old, was not drinking enough breast milk. Concerned, she contacted Thomson Medical, where she had given birth. “I thought issue was mine, so I made an appointment with the lactation consultant & brought her along,” Madam Tan said.
The lactation nurse told the parents to rush the newborn to the emergency department at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Elvia was taken to the intensive care unit after she was diagnosed with maple syrup urine disease (MSUD).
