Local actor Joshua Ang and air stewardess Shannon Low got married on 3 Mar 2018 and on 4 Aug 2018, their first son, Jed was born.
The newborn was then brought home three days later, which is when the nightmare began.
In a blog post on 8 June 2019, Ang talked about a nightmare which no new parents or any parents would want to go through. He was recommended a confinement nanny by a friend. Unfortunately for him, his new born son soon ended up in the intensive care unit (ICU) due to the negligence by the confinement nanny.
According to his blog post, Ang was told that the nanny has 12 years of experience and was fully booked till the next lunar new year, which gave them hope that she would do a good job in caring for his newborn. But boy were they wrong.
Ang claimed that since day 1, the nanny never listened to the instructions of the new parents and would even disallow the new parents from carrying the baby.
In his blog post he also said
But since day 1 of working with us, she has never followed our instructions. She would never listen to us and would always disallow us from carrying our own baby. She would always tell us to ignore his cries and do things her way. We wanted a milk warmer, but she didn't want to use one. My friend specially prepared tonics for Shannon, she didn't want to use them. There were herbs from sponsors, she didn't want to prepare them according to instructions. We bought a bunch of premium milk bottles, she wanted to use a specific brand. She would rather prepare Jed's milk using formula milk because it was easier, instead of using Shannon's breast milk which was in abundance, and even leaving those not stored in the freezer to turn bad. It was tough on Shannon to keep pumping throughout the day and night, and all of her efforts went down the drain completely, just because she was lazy.
However the problems didn't end there. The nanny even poked her nose into their family's private affairs as well as asking for skin care product from Ang's mother-in-law, simply because her previous client supposedly bought it for her. And all these happened in the first 4 days.
The nanny also overfed the baby by at least 60ml each time with the reason being that Jed will sleep longer and she can rest more.
Ang and his wife decided to do it her way since she seemed to have a wealth of experience. Their friend's baby who went through her care was also doing great.
On 8 August 2018, Jed woke up in the middle of the night, wheezing. He didn't even cry normally and so Ang and wife asked the nanny for advice. The nanny then allegedly accused the eight day old baby of "faking it" and that he'll be fine in awhile.
They then ignored the nanny's comments and went to buy a nose bulb which was supposed to help clear a baby's stuffed nose. However, that didn't help and the wheezing got worse. And his cries started becoming muffled.
Ang then decided to bring Jed to the hospital. However the nanny tried to stop them, saying:
He's faking it, he's okay, you don't need to bring him to the hospital. I'm experienced and you should trust me, I've seen it happen before. She told us to relax and not to be paranoid.
When Ang's wife Shannon tried carrying and comforting the baby, she felt that the baby's body head and neck were feeling much warmer than usual. However the nanny continued to brush it off and blamed it on their house, claiming that i was very ill-ventilated and warm.
Luckily for them, Shannon's motherly instincts kicked in and she insisted that they should go for the hospital. The nanny then said:
If you all insist to go, then up to you...
The nanny then went to pack the diaper bag without any urgency and went back to sleep. Ang then took the newborn's temperature which was at a high 38.3 degrees. Furthermore, Jed's face started turning purple. The nanny then tried using her mouth to suck the mucus from his nose but it didn't help much. Jed was then rushed to KK children's emergency hospital.
Jed was rushed into the ER at the A&E and subsequently admitted into the ICU.
By the noon the next day, Jed was diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia, with milk in his lungs. Ang claims that the only possible reason would have to be the overfeeding of milk which caused the baby to choke on the milk. Jed had 7-8 drips throughout his body.
The couple then finally decided to go home the next day to rest and get to the bottom of things. When they got home, the nanny was silent and using her mobile phone in the living room with no apology or concern for the baby. The confinement meals.drinks were not prepared for Ang's wife, bottles and pumps left unwashed and she was already packed and ready to leave. Ang's mother in law gave her a red packet and told her to leave and the nanny left with tears and insisted that it wasn't her fault.
They did further checks and realised that the nanny even cut the teat of Jed's bottles. The cut was so huge that they could fit a straw through. The milk flow was way too fast for a newborn baby.
Jed's situation deteriorated and his pneumonia developed into pneumothorax, a collapsed lung caused by air leaking into the space between the lung and chest wall. Ang described it as a hole in Jed's lungs. It was so severe that Jed's organs shifted to the left and the doctors had to insert a new tube through his chest to remove the excess air. Jed even had to have a blood transfusion due to the loss of blood from all the procedures.
Thankfully, from day 7 in the hospital onwards, his situation improved and the parents could finally hold and feed him again. And on 17 August, Jed was finally back home again.
Ang then ended the blog post by warning against hiring the same confinement nanny and thanked all those who have helped him out during the period.
