Author: Simonette

A year and a half ago my husband and I moved to Korea. I wanted to write about my life and experiences in Korea along with my current interests. Initially we came to Korea to use it as a stepping stone to immigrate to another country. But now since we’re here we are thinking of making it our new home even if it is just for the next few year as no one knows what the future holds. If you told me ten years ago I will be living in Korea now I would have called you out for bullshitting me. My brother always quotes Robbie Williams by saying “I sit and talk to God and he just laughs at my plans”. This is absolutely true. We have made so many plans with our lives but in the end its not up to us, no matter how much you try to take it into your own hands. So… here we are in Korea, living it up

Managing Toddler Tantrums: A Mom’s Experience

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Day 46 of Hazel’s Topical Steroid Withdrawal.

Topical Steroid Withdrawal (TSW) happens when someone, in this case my 4 year old, stops using Topical Steroids. The affects include, red itchy skin, mood swings and body temperature dis-regulation. Having TSW means that Hazel is tired and moody the whole time. Its almost like having a sick child. This means that we’ve been stuck indoors for more than two weeks. I was in the mood to get out of the house. Taking care of a child with TSW can be emotionally draining on a parent. It requires a lot of patience. They scratch their itchy skin. They cry because their skin is burning. I just really wanted to talk it through with a friend.

I’ve arranged to meet one of my friends for coffee before she starts work again on Wednesday. although Hazel’s energy levels has been low, she has shown interest in going for walks the last couple of days. I also just wanted to get out of the house a little bit. I agreed to meet my friend, Carla, at the local Beach Cafe. The cafe looks out over the beach. It offers a beautiful view of Rangitoto Island. Rangitoto is a volcanic island in the Hauraki Gulf.

When we arrived at the cafe, it was already very busy and we had to sit inside. It was loud and Hazel complained about the noise. I told her that it was because it was so busy inside. She was happy with that answer. We proceeded to order. Hazel wanted a strawberry ice cream. Because it is pink. My friend and I both ordered a sweet Chi Latte. We didn’t stay too long as it was too noisy. We then went for a walk along Takapuna Beach.

I needed to talk to someone about how TSW has affected not just Hazel but also me as a parent. Because TSW makes her skin itchy she scratched night and day. This means that we often don’t get enough sleep in as we wake up every time that she wakes up. In turn, Hazel feels grumpy because she hasn’t slept enough during the night. We all know how important a good nights rest is. Imagine how hard it is to operate normally. We haven’t had a proper night’s rest in more than three months. As a parent it also makes me feel tired, impatient and incredibly overwhelmed. Talking about our experienced proved to be therapeutic. I was having a lovely time talking to my friend. I didn’t want to go home yet. We agreed to go for a walk in the local mall.

Instead of it being a lovely relaxed time it turned into something else.

Once we got into the store, Hazel wanted to go home. She wanted to be carried around and she wanted to leave. She started crying and shouting. I then said to her that I won’t carry her if she’s shouting at me. Remember she is a feisty 4 year old. She then proceeded to scream and nothing I said calmed her down. I then decided to move myself away from the situation. I told her that I need her to calm down. I will come and talk to her when she’s calm. I sat down in the little chairs they have in malls, about 1.5 meters away from her with my back to her. This did not help either as she continued to scream. I watched her in the reflection of the shop window across from me. People were staring at her and asked where her mommy was. When they saw that I was right there, people gave me that “oh, she’s having a moment” look. Then they proceeded with their day. Eventually a lady took her by the hand. She asked her where her mommy was. Hazel started to calm down. When she was calm, I moved closer and managed to talk to her. All in all this was very embarrassing and took a lot from me, trying to pretend I couldn’t hear her.

Behavior management Tip

During this experience, I set a clear expectation for her. I said, “When you calm down, you can come and talk to me.” I made sure she was safe, by placing myself close enough to her to intervene if needed. I faced away from her so that she can’t see me responding to this unwanted behavior. I then used a strategy called Ignoring. If we ignore a behavior, eventually it will stop. Still, with toddlers and young children, it is important we always check that it is safe to ignore a behavior. It is important to make sure that your child is safe during this phase.

According to He Mapuna te Tamaiti “It is important to remember that when we ignore, there will usually be a period within which the behavior escalates. During this time, it can be unsafe to ignore. If after a period of ignoring you decide you can no longer ignore and must respond to the child’s behavior, the behavior will be strengthened. So decisions to ignore need to be made very carefully.”

Always remember to ignore the behavior and not the child. Once your child calms down, be kind and friendly when they behave appropriately.

Caring for Kids with Eczema: A Parent’s Journey

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Our little girl was born in 2020. She started off with some dry skin patches over her tummy. That summer we noticed that she gets really red, weepy patches of skin in the folds like her knees, elbows and under her chin, in those little rolls that babies always have. I took her to the doctor and they gave us some creams. At about 7 months old we took her back to the doctors and they said she had eczema. They gave us a “lovely” little tube labelled Hydrocortisol 0.1%. This stuff was amazing. When we applied it to her skin, by the afternoon it seemed like her eczema was cured. There were a few really important things that we weren’t aware of.

No. 1 Do not apply it on the face or genital area. The doctor prescribed it to apply to her face for the eczema. Additionally she was prescribed another cortisol cream to be applied to her bottom because her her bottom seemed to have dry skin.

No. 2 Do not use it for more than 2 weeks. Unless otherwise prescribed by a physician. We weren’t warned about using the steroids for extended periods of time. Instead we were told “If the eczema flares again, apply the Cortisol (Steroid cream) to the affected area. What happens here then is that after 2 weeks the eczema is completely gone. Then she would get a viral infections or the weather would change and the eczema would return. Which in turn means that we were applying the cortisol again.

Fast forward 3 years. Our little girl is now 4. She’s been using the cortisol creams on and off again since she was 7 months old. When we request more cortisol from the doctors they would send as much as 6 tubes at a time. This practice shows that there is no concern from the doctors in the amount of cortisol we could use. As a note I would also like to add that even the Dermatologist told us to keep using the cortisol if the eczema returned.

Earlier in 2024 her eczema flared because of a viral infection she had. Her eczema was mostly concentrated at the back of her knees and in the folds of her elbows. So we again started applying the cortisol. This winter was more wet and humid than the previous year which means she had more eczema flares than the year before. By August it seemed that her eczema was actually getting worse. It was now down the length of her arm, down the side of her body, all over her thighs and on her cheeks. I had contacted a skin specialist but was waiting for an appointment. By October she was hospitalized because her skin was all red and weepy. She was prescribed stronger steroids/cortisol and antibiotics. After about tow weeks of antibiotics the eczema returned. The red skin on her arms, legs and trunk didn’t get any better either. it only got worse.

In November we managed to see the skin specialist. What we thought was extreme eczema turned out to be something else. It was in fact Topical Steroid Withdrawal. Our child’s skin had stopped making it’s own cortisol to protect itself. Her skin had become overly reliant on the topical creams. We had to start a weening process which was only the beginning of our struggle…..

Symptoms of Topical Steroid Withdrawal

Red, itchy skin. Eczema in places where your child has never had eczema before. Eczema type rashes concentrated on sides of rump, large areas on legs and arms, and neck. Eczema that looks like a red sleeve on the arms. If your child are experiencing any of these, they might have Cortisol withdrawal.

Why I decided not to use a dummy/passifier

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As part of being an Early Childhood we deal with a lot of children and all their emotions. Some know how to self regulate and others don’t.

Self Regulation

A baby learns soothing through sucking on her mother’s breast. Later when babies find their hands, they start putting their hands in their mouth’s to self regulate. I’ve decided not to use dummies as it forces the regulation on an external object. Imagine this scenario : A little girl falls down. She feels hurt and starts to cry. The mother tries to console her, a natural response, but now, all the girl wants, is her dummy.

Speech development

In addition, research has proven that prolonged passifier use can “distort the development of s,z,sh,ch,t,d,n’ sounds eg ‘sun’ might sound like ‘thun’. This is because the dummy encourages the forward-backward movement of a baby’s tongue which results in these sounds being pushed forward.” Extract from a research article called The Impact of Prolonged (meaning beyond 18 months) Pacifier Use

Oral fixation

The above mentioned refers to long term use but from experience I know that for some children it’s really hard to get rid of the habit of dummy sucking. Oral fixation is therefore referred to the habit of fixating on an oral object. Oral fixation is a term first used by Sigmund Freud in relation to getting fixated on the oral stage of development. These children may then as adults get fixated to other objects related to the mouth example, cigarettes and or food. Read more https://theeducationlife.com/oral-fixation/

There are certainly benefits to dummies and pacifiers but I have chosen not to introduce yhem.to my baby. I would love to hear your opinions on this no matter how varied 😉

Spending Christmas with a sick baby

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I absolutely love Christmas. This year I was super excited to spend it with my little girl, it being her first Christmas and all. We planned on dining at a friends house on Christmas Eve and then visiting another friend on Christmas day.

We set off to meet our friends at 5:30pm. When we got out of the car I thought Hazel felt a bit hot, but as you know the car seat can make a baby feel warmer. After having welcoming drinks we sat down to dinner. I had finished my first plate of food and was planning to get a second helping when I felt that my little girl was really feeling hot now.

Luckily my friend has 2 little boys and she suggested that we take her temperature. It was 39 degrees and we decided to take her to the Emergency Care Clinic.

The clinic was pretty busy so we had to wait. Apparently having a high fever isn’t seen as that important. To me, fever means danger. When I was young my parents always said we had to get the fever down or break the fever. They would even put us in icy cold bath water to try and break the fever. Breaking the fever was the most important thing. So naturally, I thought a high temperature is an emergency. The doctors reassured us that it’s the body’s natural response to a virus. They said they would put a urine bag on Hazel to check whether she had a UTI but they forgot.

We only got at around 11pm and sat up all night sponging her head to get her to cool down but to no avail. By 5 am her temperature was under 38 degrees and we thought we were out of the clear. By 9 am on Christmas day, her temperature spiked again and stayed at 38.5 most of the day. By 10pm it went up to 39 and we went back to the clinic. This time they referred us to the hospital. We waited for Hazel to have a wee in order to check her urine for a UTI test. At first she missed the bag and we had to wait some more. During our time at the hospital her fever broke and her temperature came back to normal. We only left the hospital at 5 am on the day after Christmas.

The rest of the day we periodically checked her temperature to make sure that it stayed low. That night it sounded like she had trouble breathing and off we went to hospital again…turns out we were just paranoid new parents

Hazel’s Christmas outfits

On Sunday night she developed a rash all over her face. We phoned the healthline and was advised to head back to the Emergency Care Clinic.

This time the doctor was able to explain to us what we needed to look out for in the case of a bacterial rash and told us that a rash iften appears after a viral infection. He was very informative and to be honest, the best doctor amongst all the doctors we encountered over the weekend.

All in all we’re glad she’s better and hopefully next Christmas we’ll be able to have more fun with Hazel.

Hazel’s Birth Story

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Today my little girl turns 4 months and I thought I’d share her birth story with you.

She was due on Sunday the 27th of July so naturally I stopped working two weeks prior to get ready for her arrival. I packed my hospital bag. Bought apple juice, mini water bottles, some nut bars and fruit and nut mixes. We had our birth plan ready. I wanted to have her all natural. I even bought the Hypnobirthing book and downloaded birthing meditations. The plan was to breathe through the pain and only gas if neccessary.

Come week 40 and I was patiently waiting for my contractions to start….

By Wednesday she still hasn’t arrived. I then opted for sweeping. Still nothing. I did the sweep 3 times. When asked whether I wanted to be induced I declined, hoping that my little girl would make her appearance all in her own. But no…

Towards the end of 41 I was induced. I was admitted to hospital at 7pm on Friday night. At 10pm I was inducted with the gel. At 11pm, the contractions started. I had 1 every 10 minutes. I didn’t sleep a wink. Luckily I was able to walk around and sitting on this big leather chair was my saving grace. The chair was nice and low and I could pull my knees up to my chest, this helped a lot

At 11 am I only dialated 3 cm and the nurse broke my waters. Unfortunately there was meconium in the water which meant that now, labour had to be hurried along and I was immediately put on an oxytocin drip. Hazel did not like that at all, and her heart rate dropped. I was taken off the drip for an hour. After being examined again, I was still only dialated 3cm and there was talk of a C-section, which was honestly the last thing I wanted.

After an hour I was put back on oxytocin. Hazel’s heart rate was constantly monitored. Since she was posterior, I had to lie on my side the whole time, and let me tell you, that’s the most uncomfortable position to be in when dealing with contractions. After about an hour of this I asked for an epidural, baring in mind that I’ve tried the gas but it made me extremely sick

At around 5pm my midwife arrived. She turned on a diffuser and it calmed me right down. At around 6:40pm I could start to feel my contractions again and asked for a top up on the epidural. My midwife suggested that we check the contractions first. I have dialated 10cm. She said we shouls start to push. At 6:58 I started to push and by 7:19 our little Hazel was born.

It has been the best moment in my life even with all the ups and downs leading up to the birth. I had amazing support from my husband and my midwife was just fantastic. Even though I wasn’t able to Hypnobirth, I’m still happy about the outcome…a beautiful healthy little girl