The All Clear

We are just getting home from our trip to Kalamazoo to see Dr. Dommer the Pediatric cardiologist. This was our first real road trip with Emma, and we weren't sure how well she would be riding in the car for over an hour but she took it in stride, like she does most things. I don't know why we ever worry anymore.

Just before we left we got the call from Dr. Shah that Emma's biliruben levels had fallen to 15.4, which was low enough to allow her to stop using the biliruben light. So we did not have to rig the biliruben light to work in the car on the way there, which I had a plan for and was almost disappointed that I did not get to play with it. Regardless it is nice to be free of the biliruben light, and now we can just work on establishing some type of routine for our new life with Emma.

For the trip to Kalamazoo we took the truck rather than the Pacifier (the Pacifica's nickname), and we had some small challenges trying to fit Emma's car seat in the backseat of the truck. We managed to work it out pretty well but we had to change out plans from what we had intended to do originally. We learned some lessons with the car seat and will make some adjustments for future trips.

The stroller that came with the car seat proved to be invaluable. I was not convinced that we needed a dedicated stroller for the car seat but it was great today. Our stroller also works great and Dr. Dommer even noticed how great it worked and rolled when she helped us pack our trash and move to a different exam room. So we are very pleased with the new car seat and stroller combination.

The visit started with an EKG where Emma was hooked up to a bunch of wires to read her heartbeat. At first the stickers for the EGK would not stay on her skin because we had just bathed her before we left for Kalamazoo and the baby lotion was not allowing the adhesive to stick. So she got wiped down with some alcohol wipes in the appropriate areas and then we had an Emma that looked something like the first picture in this post. Now don't be fooled by how calm she looks in that picture, that is just what happened after she screamed all of her energy out. We don't really mind the screaming, after the jaundice made her so lackadaisical it is nice to see her fuss sometimes (we are certain this will pass shortly.)

After the the EKG we took Emma across the hall to get an Eco-Cardiogram. I know many of you know already know what that is, but for those of you who are like me that is basically where they look over your heart using an ultrasound machine. This was pretty neat as we got to watch her heart in real time, and this time she was more cooperative as you can see in the second picture where Jen is holding her hand.
At the end of all this what we learned is that Emma has a hole in her heart about 1 mm in size. This hole is located between the right and left ventricles. This is a heart defect known as Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD). According to Dr. Dommer this condition will have no effect on Emma's life for all practical purposes. Dr. Dommer told us all we need to do for now is come back in a year or two to have it looked at again just to be sure that the hole is not causing trouble. This is clearly a great relief to us, and between the jaundice clearing up and now a ruling on her heart murmur we feel like tings are finally under control (wishful thinking no doubt.) The third picture is a copy of the print out that they gave us which shows the hole in Emma's heart, good luck finding it.

The last picture is me all "Dadded Up," that Jen had to take because she got a kick out of it. So I figured I would put it on here. Also we added more pictures yesterday and today, so check out the photo album and look at the new photos. Also Dr. Dommer's office they took Emma's medical statistics which I will type out below for your review, she is improving in almost every way.

Blood Pressure: 72 at both her arm & leg (don't know why only one number)

Heart Rate: 104 Sleeping; 130 Awake

Head: 13.5" (same as birth)

Length: 19.5" (same as birth)

Weight: 7 lbs 14 oz (up two oz)

Clearly it has been a busy but great day. We got the news we had hoped to hear from both the jaundice and heart murmur issues. Emma is now eating more and more aggressivly and all signs now indicate that she is very healthy and she can now just focus on being a baby.

JWR