Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Jellybean Update

It has been an interesting week as far as Jellybean goes. On Monday I went to the doctor because I had some cramping and then I hadn't felt the baby move. They did a quick ultrasound and we saw the beautiful heartbeat and a little leg kicking. It is possible that since I am incredibly sick my focus has been on my headaches and not the sweet little kicking. (about 5 hours after the appointment Jellybean was kicking pretty hard for about 3 hours!!!) The doctor offered to listen to my heart and lungs to make sure the cold hadn't settled in my chest. He lisened to my heart for quite a long time and then asked "have you always had a murmer?". I was shocked by this and he said that it was a little loud for his comfort and wanted an echocardiogram. I went and had that done yestarday. We went back to the doctor today because he wanted to do an ultrasound to make sure the baby was ok. The ultrasound tech pulled up my chart, saw that we saw a perinatologist and siad that she wasn't going to do a full ultrasound because the perinatlogist would do it. I thought it was ridiculous that she wouldn't follow the doctor's orders. So we weren't able to find out the sex of the baby today. We do have a detailed level 2 ultrasound in 2 weeks so hopefully we'll find out then. THe good thing though was that there was a perfect amount of fluid and on the scan we saw a HUGE stomach! These things are exciting for us because I had way too much fluid with Jack because his esophagus was in 2 pieces and we never saw Jack's stomach on an ultrasound because of the esophagus as well. Seeing that big round stomach was an absolute miracle to us.


Here are some pictures from the ultrasound today!

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Another trip to the ER....One month later

Well, exactly a month to the day from our last trip to the ER we had another eventful day filled with medical challenges. Jack went down for his nap as usual but then had some difficulty breathing. I went in to check on him and he was limp and unresponsive. We couldn't wake him up. We called 911 and did our best to suction and had to so some rescue breathing. He was going from rigid to limp quite frequently during the whole ordeal but was ok when he finally woke up in the ambulance. Once we got to the ER he had a full seizure that required some serious medication to sedate him. They had to give him a double dose because the first one didn't bring him out of the seizure. They told us he'd be out for about 8 hours. Well, 3 hours later he was awake and wanting to eat my fruit. They did a CT scan that looked normal so they transported us to Strong for a neurology consult. They did an EEG yesterday before we left the hospital. I wish I had my camera because I know that tomorrow I won't believe that he slept through having his head marked, the probes attached and then being taped up. They came to give us the results and told us that there were some patterns that would be abnormal on an adult but were normal for some children. They want to follow up with an MRI in the next month.

On Tuesday we were supposed to go to the grocery store after Jack woke up from the nap. Well, the seizure kind of messed up that plan. The problem was that all grocery stores closed at 6 pm on Christmas eve and I was missing at least 1 ingredient in every single recipe for our Christmas dinner. The doctors were really dragging their feet getting together the discharge papers so we finally went out and told them that we wanted to get to the store before it closed. They finally got everything together and we signed the discharge papers at 5:05 pm. We ran out of the hospital and drove to the Wegmans in Rochester. We had never been there so we had to manage the chaos and still find everything we needed. The funniest thing though was that the markings from the EEG, which were 20 bright blue crosses, were still on Jack's head! It did not come off with a warm washcloth like they promised. We had to wait until we got home to scrub his head with shampoo. I can't imagine what people were thinking at the store!

We then had an uneventful 2 hour drive home. Jack, surprisingly, stayed awake the whole trip playing with his toys and reading every single book we had in the car. We were all so thankful to be home before Christmas morning.

It is amazing how quickly Jack recovers from his various episodes. He usually falls really hard and then bounces back very quickly. I mean, back in June, he was life-flighted and was moments away from being on life support and 4 days later he was discharged straight from the PICU. He is truly an incredible miracle. We are so lucky to have him for our son. Jellybean will have a wonderful brother to look up to!