From a medical perspective, it was an interesting February. During Audrey's one-year check up, our pediatrician thankfully gave us 2 referrals - one for a pediatric opthamologist and one for a plastic surgeon for her skull. Let's start with the skull. Head circumference is just fine but it is quite long and narrow. We wanted to get it checked out to make sure one of the growth plates hadn't fused prematurely. That involved a CT-scan at the children's hospital. Well, to have a CT scan on an infant, they need to be sedated to ensure they stay still. We went in that morning and they were unable to sedate her. She was recovering from RSV which is a respiratory infection and they were concerned about sedating her when her lungs weren't 100%. The options were to wait 2 weeks, which wasn't appealing to my type-A, no patience personality - or to see if I could get her to fall asleep and then remain asleep while we strapped her down on the bed for the CT. Well - miracle of all miracles - about 90 minutes later, Audrey fell asleep and after a couple of tries, she was on the CT bed, awake but groggy and eventually fell back to sleep so we could get the test done. We had a long week awaiting the results and the final consult with the doc but thankfully her growth plates are all open and her skull shape is probably just that way from too much time laying on her side in the crib at the babyhome. No skull surgery! Hooray!! If she was younger, he would have had a helmet molded to help reshape her head - but because of her age, he didn't think that would make much of a difference so Audrey's head will be perfectly imperfect. Thank goodness for long hair!
Now, on to the pediatric opthamologist. The primary concern was her left eye which has a tendency to veer outward. She has what is called exotropia which is basically a weak eye muscle. We are monitoring it until June to see if it strengthens on its own and if not, probably a relatively standard surgery on that eye muscle. The bigger concern is the potential for Audrey to have congenital glaucoma. I am sure you have all noticed those big brown eyes of hers. Well, apparently eyes that are that large are an early indicator of congenital glaucoma. For infants, they can only do the glaucoma pressure test when they are under general anesthesia and then if the test is positive, they immediately do surgery as well. Because they don't just willy-nilly put infants under general anesthesia (thankfully), we are in a holding pattern. If she ends up having surgery for the exotropia based on our June visit, then we will handle the glaucoma test (and potentially surgery) then as well. If she doesn't need the eye muscle surgery, not sure what happens then. Not sure if they think it will be serious enough to put her under to do the glaucoma test or not since we really don't know if she has glaucoma or not at this point, other than the huge brown eyes - no cloudiness and really no excessive tearing. So - we wait until June... thinking positive thoughts that her big, brown eyes are just naturally big, beautiful, and most importantly healthy eyes.
Other than that, things are just perfect here. Audrey and Clare are the best of friends and I love being a mom of two. They light up my life and just fill my heart. I am so lucky to be their mommy. What fun we are having as a family of 3!!
As usual - I am bad about pictures right now. Here are a couple at the very least...
Kathy
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| My Picasso in training at her school this week. Finger painting turned quickly into body painting! |
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| Just hanging around on a Saturday morning. |
