Another Myth...

After blogging about Human vs Cow, here is another myth greatly affecting majority of the Chinese population here. They think there is a NEED to feed all newborns with plain water (sky juice) -- preferably alternating with each milk feeding; for they fear that if they don't give them plain water, and just give them solely milk, the babies will get dehydrated and become heaty! Then the consequences will be constipation, followed by abdominal distension, vomit, poor oral intake, jaundice blah blah blah.... A long list of complications!

It's pretty hard to convince those young mothers to just give milk and no other plain water -- even the young mothers are convinced to do so, there is always a great force behind her to go against all these "western" advice -- the infamous Mother-In-Law!! So far i have encountered many young mothers, especially Chinese, have difficulties and in great dilemma because they are sandwiched between their personal thoughts, and that of their MIL's!

I even encounter jaundiced babies with serum bilirubin as high as 19mg/dL at day 3, but refused to get the babies admitted -- because the MILs have some "traditional herbs" to cure that "disease"! They refuse phototherapy, because they think that when babies cry a lot in under the photoRx, it is heartbreaking; if they bring the babies out of it, they get scolded by the nurses... So when some of them, according to my consultant with >15 yrs experience, end up in the cerebral palsy clinic, they beg the doctors to do their best.