Doctors Appointments

This week starts a barrage of doctors appointments for Natalie.  We started with the pediatrician for her Monday, the OBGYN for me Tuesday, the surgeon tomorrow and the lactation consultant on Thursday.  Next month, we’ll see the cardiologist and audiologist and then the geneticist when she’s six months old. 

The pediatrician’s visit went well.  Natalie had gained 3 ounces since being home and was up to 7 lbs 4 oz!.  She’s been eating more than required almost every feeding and seems hungry most every feeding.  Our concern about her big belly turned out to be fine.  She is just growing and the doctor said her scar looked good.  Dr. Musgrave said she could hardly hear the holes in her heart so they must be very small.  The doctor said she was very pleased with Natalie’s progress and said we were doing great.  She mentioned that they would test Natalie for thyroid, blood counts and celiac disease because of the Down’s.  I’ve since looked that up on the internet.  We knew about the thyroid and she tested fine in the hospital.  The blood counts can test high for white blood cells and look like leukemia in newborns with Down’s.  I think they said it was called transient leukemia but usually went away within a few weeks.  I think her blood work was fine in the hospital but they will test again at her 2 month appointment.  Apparently, leukemia can be more common for Down’s kids also.  Celiac disease is serious gluten intolerance.  It looks like that seems to be low percentages but it is higher for Down’s kids so they test for it.  More things to worry about but as David reminded me to night, just look at how well she’s doing right now and don’t worry about all the possibilities of what might go wrong.

My OBGYN visit was fairly routine- the c-section seems to be healing fine.  Natalie and I had a very rough night on Monday.  We think she’s picked up Zach’s nasal congestion.  I couldn’t seem to get her back to bed in the wee hours on Monday night/Tuesday morning.  David had a midnight release at work so was just as tired as I was.  After I finally got Natalie to sleep at 6, I got back in bed and Julia came in with a bad dream.  We slept for about a half hour and then got up to get ready for school.  When they left for school, I got in bed for about 15 minutes before Natalie was up again.  We were supposed to see the lactation consultant early Tuesday but I had to postpone cause I was too tired.  David was able to get up a little bit after Natalie’s 8 o’clock feeding so I could get some sleep.  We called the pediatrician about the nasal congestion and ended up letting Natalie sleep in her bouncee seat the rest of the day with great success.  Hopefully, that will help her tonight as well.

We met with our Early intervention coordinator, Nia, in the late afternoon Tuesday to develop Natalie’s IFSP (something Family Service Plan).  It took a really long time (2 hours!) but we got it all on paper.  Nia is going to talk to a physical therapist to come out to our house soon.  Zach and Julia did a great job playing outside the whole time Nia was here.  David took the rest of the day off so was able to be here too to help fill in the paper work.  We got done so close to dinner that we took the whole family out to McAllister’s for kids eat free night.  Natalie did great with all of the commotion at the restaurant.  She was bundled up into her infant seat and stayed awake for a little longer but fell asleep on our table while we all ate. 

Missed playing our dinner game but thought I’d mention a new one we played the night before to those of you who might like to try.  This one was called “what’s missing?”  We took turns having each of us close eyes while everyone else took something off the table.  The person closing their eyes had to guess what was gone.  The kids are really liking the dinner games.  We’ve started eating with Natalie on top of the dinner table so she gets to be part of it too.  She’s usually asleep before dinner’s over but the kids enjoy having her with us.  Here’s to something normal!

Better sign off.  Praying for more sleep tonight and good visits with the surgeon tomorrow and lactation Thursday.  Hopefully pictures tomorrow.

Amy