Has it really been 2 months since I put anything on this blog??? We have been very busy! Ella is at daycare with her big brother and I am back to work. It is actually very nice to have a routine!
Ella has had 2 appointments just in this month that were kind of important. We had to go back to the cardiologist last week. Ella is showing that she does have two small holes still. He was really not concerned. We did talk about why these two holes had such a major impact on Ella. It was weird to hear everyone tell me how common the holes were but still see that she was in congestive heart failure and having such a difficult time. I would be sitting in the lobby with other parents and listen to their stories about how their child's heart needed to be reconstructed and so forth. I am more than positive that why this happened to Ella was explained to me before, but I was also not really in the frame of mind to register the why. I could tell you so many other things but the answer to this question. I also have people keep referring to Ella as a preemie, even though she was a 39 weeker. I finally understood why!
Ella had a 2 vessel umbilical cord which did cause some growth restriction. When she was born she had similarities of a 32 week baby, hence the premature. This also caused her little system to not handle the heart defect as well as bigger, stronger babies. When babies are born, the pressure in their lungs slowly open up allowing them to start working and allowing blood flow. This is usually a slow process, but for Ella, her body was not strong enough and her pressures tanked. He compared it to a dam breaking allowing the blood to rush to her lungs. When we say that her lungs were filled with fluid, it was not fluid like a cold, but blood in her veins.
As a result of all the blood being shunted to her lungs, her heart had to work extra hard to get blood to go everywhere it needed. This caused her body to go into self preservation and focus on getting blood to the main organs and not so much to her limbs and skin. This gave her a dusky appearance and actually made her fingers and toes white, like a weird not normal white!
NOW our little Ella Grace has a normal body color, except her fingers and toes turn purple when she is cold, but I was told not to worry about it, but it is still WEIRD!!! She is no longer considered to be in congestive heart failure and the holes that she does still have could possibly heal, but will not cause any issues!
This brings me up to today. We had our pediatrician appointment. She weighs 10 pounds 12 ounces and is 26 inches long. We are not going to remove the feeding tube because Ella did not gain as much weight as we would have liked. She did not make the curve on her growth chart like she should have/ He would like her to gain more, but he knows that she is growing because her height is still making the curve, unlike her weight. He said that this just means that she needs more calories. She needs to get 600 calories a day so I had to break all of that down. Basically she needs to get her tummy to take more frequent feeds or 5 ounces at a feed. In order to make sure she gets this, we MAY have to put what she does not get through her tube. Not a big deal, but I am not to pumped about having to change the Mic-Key! That is where Nurse Grandma is going to come in! :) Otherwise, Dr. Cooley thought Ella was doing remarkably well from where she started! I must say, I am pretty darn proud of that girl!
No comments:
Post a Comment