Weight

• Birth: 7 lbs 1 oz
• Three Days: 6 lbs 11 oz – 50%
• Two Weeks: 7 lbs 5 oz – 50%
• One Month: 8 lbs 6.5 oz – 50%
• Eight Weeks: 10 lbs 10.5 oz – 50%

Length

• Birth: 20″ (we think this was .5 off)
• Three Days: 19.5″ – 50%
• Two Weeks: 20.5″ – 75%
• One Month: 21.75″ – 75%
• Eight Weeks: 22.60″ – 75%

Head

• Birth: Unknown
• Three Days: 13 7/8″ – 75%
• Two Weeks: 14″ – 75%
• One Month: 14.5″ – 75%
• Eight Weeks: 15 3/8″ – 75%

After waiting for three days, the phone call came this afternoon from her pediatrician. After carrying the phone around incensently for the past three days everywhere we went not wanting to miss the call, it came at the exact same moment that a spam call hit my cell. So exact, that it never rang and went straight to voicemail….and so timed that when I tried calling the doctor’s office back, it was already closed for the day. And it’s the weekend.

No mind. Elia’s pediatrician is an ex-military (Air Force) doctor, and he gets to the point in a hurry. The message was 20 seconds long, and included the only thing that we wanted to hear – thankfully, he didn’t wait to talk with us in person as that could have added several days to the wait. The diagnosis? NO dysplasia. The ultrasound came back as normal, and we are cheerfully able to cross this off of the list. Smile. Relief.

Hopefully this is the last post describing anything that Elia/we are dealing with in new. Fingers crossed that anything beyond this one just becomes follow up postings and updates.

Let’s talk fever in newborns…<12 weeks old. If you don’t know or remember, it can’t go above 100.4 without sounding off alarms and requiring a trip to the ER. Well, last week, Elia sounded those alarms and bought herself a trip to the ER. Of course, this had to start when I was at the firehouse – at 1130 at night, none-the-less. Thankfully, her fever was ‘only’ 99+ around then, and my Mom was able to come and stay with Ahna to help out while I finished out the night at work. And while none of the three of us got good sleep that night, Ahna definitely had to dig deep to make it through a long, long night. Just before I got home, Elia’s temperature hit that magic line of 100.4, and off we went to the ER.

Elia got a full – and I mean full – workup in part due to her age, but also in part due to the belly button issue that in this instance turns itself into a direct access into her body. Spinal tap (times two), nasal flush, RSV test, flu test, urine collection, blood draw, and IV medicine and antibiotics made for a very long day. Due to the course of treatment, and the need to wait for cultures to grow for final determination of diagnosis, we found ourselves in the hospital for 48 hours…which seemed like a weird and unexpected blip in time. Ezra stayed with my parents, and we were again thankful for their proximity and his resilience.

Final diagnosis was actually something along the lines of pre-bronchiolitis – if there is such a thing. Basically it was simply a viral respiratory infection, but we were able to treat it and deal with it before it morphed into something more serious. Elia’s fever broke by the first evening, and the last part of the stay was merely precautionary and waiting on results.

It must be mentioned that this trip put us at Sky Ridge Hospital, which is the third hospital that we have spent time at in the past two years (Parker and Children’s being the others). While we have been impressed with all of them, and have had different needs/experiences at each, we were impressed with Sky Ridge as a facility and as a staff. While I don’t know that we received anything special, it was really reassuring to know some of the folks that we know there, and as they checked in on us and made sure that we had what we needed, it gave us another level of comfort in a sometimes uncomfortable situation. We were again reminded of the amazing extended family of the fire service and how far that sometimes extends. Thank you, Sky Ridge!

We noticed that the fluid from her belly button had not stopped leaking, and inquired with the pediatrician during her one month visit. He again referred us to get an ultrasound, to determine if there  was urine leaking from the area. For the record, that sounded completely strange to me, since I had no idea that this was even possible. But, it turns out that in utero, the bladder is connected to the umbilical cord to drain some waste from the baby, and this connection should close at/near birth. Sometimes, it doesn’t.

The ultrasound revealed that that is exactly what is happening with her belly button.  We had a visit last week with a pediatric surgical urologist at The Children’s Hospital, and he confirmed that Elia will need surgery to repair the connection (ie: get rid of it). We are understood that this will be ‘minor’ on the scale of surgeries, but will include an incision through her belly button, and general anesthesia…..therefore making it a little more than ‘minor’ to us. It will be one of those all day events, two hours prior, 1.5 hours surgery, 3-5 hours afterwards; but if all goes well, we will be home that night. Should she need further attention, there really isn’t a better place in the world for her to be.

While we understand the weight of these issues, or more specifically, we understand perspective on how much worse things could be…it is still somewhat challenging. We have also deliberately strayed from research on the internet, as clear answers are a lot harder to come by than fear is to find. Neither of these issues are urgent, and neither of these issues are cause for any lasting effects at this point.

The doctors in the hospital first noticed a click in both hips when doing examinations just after birth. They stated that due to the fact that she was breach and that she was a she, this upped the likelihood that she might have those clicks, and that those clicks might turn out to be hip dysplasia. This possibility was confirmed by our pediatrician, and has been noticed on her left hip on each of the visits – although less so over the past two weeks. Our pediatrician referred us to get an ultrasound of her hips to confirm/rule out the dysplasia, which we did a couple of weeks ago.

It turns out that she didn’t meet the coverage needs of the hip to the femur, thus indicating that there might be something that needs further treatment….however, there are two very key things that came up. The first is that the tech tried to dislocate her hips, and was not successful – which is a good thing. The second is that she was really too young to even be there for a good diagnosis, and there is a chance that she doesn’t even have a problem. Normally, they wait until 4 weeks post full-term to do the ultrasound, so we had to make another trip to the hospital for another ultrasound of the same place. We did that yesterday, and are awaiting the results from our pediatrician. The tech – probably doing exactly has she is supposed to do – didn’t give us any indication either way, despite our abbreviated attempts at prying it out of her.

We haven’t really explored what treatment options are out there, as we don’t know that we need to just yet. We do know that when dysplasia is found and treated at this age, it is ‘totally’ fixable with some relatively minor intervention, like a brace of some sort for a few weeks/months – upwards of six months possible. So, we patiently await a phone call from our doctor…

We begin the same tradition that we have held with Ezra….monthly photos; so without further ado, here is Month 1!

Weight

• Birth: 7 lbs 1 oz
• Three Days: 6 lbs 11 oz – 50%
• Two Weeks: 7 lbs 5 oz – 50%
• One Month: 8 lbs 6.5 oz – 50%

Length

• Birth: 20″ (we think this was .5 off)
• Three Days: 19.5″ – 50%
• Two Weeks: 20.5″ – 75%
• One Month: 21.75″ – 75%

Head

• Birth: Unknown
• Three Days: 13 7/8″ – 75%
• Two Weeks: 14″ – 75%
• One Month: 14.5″ – 75%