Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Busy day

We had a full day of appointments. Well, really a few appointments and a lot of waiting around. First, Mabry had her ct scan to evaluate her metopic ridge situation. We don't know the results yet. She sees the doctor for this on the 7th, but we hope to get some preliminary results of the ct scan in a few days. Next, Mabry had an echocardiogram & EKG to look at her heart. Everything looked pretty good. She still has small PDA, but it is not causing her any problems. The doctor expects it will close at about 1 year old and is not concerned about it at this time. They want to check her again in a year. We got to talk to an occupation therapist about Mabry's feeding problem, sleep eating. She said keep doing what we are doing, she is happy with her weight gain, but she did say we can introduce cereal & baby food & even a sippy cup. Finally, both babies had an eye exam. Both have astigmatism and Alex is near sighted and Mabry is far sighted. He said Alex may need glasses when he gets to school age, but considering all the eye issues micro preemies can have, we didn't get any of them. Pretty good news so far, hoping for more good news when we hear results from ct scan.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Good news, Bad news

We had a full day of appointments yesterday. Mabry had a kidney ultrasound, which revealed the calcification is gone. Both babies had evaluation with physical therapy to check their development. Both of them are doing great. Alex has the development of a 4 month old and Mabry is slightly better with the development of a 5 month old. They will be evaluated again at home in August by Illinois Early Intervention. They will not have to be seen at Cardinal Glennon for nursery follow up for about a year, when they will have a Bayley Test. The Bayley Test is a rather lengthy test that will test their development in depth. 
The bad news is the doctors discovered Mabry has a Metopic ridge, a ridge that runs on her forehead to her soft spot. We aren't sure what this means yet. Many babies have a Metopic ridge, but it can also be a major problem, called Craniosynostosis. This happens when the plates in the babies head fuse together prematurely, and causes their head to be mishaped and can not give their brain sufficient space to grow. They took X-rays, and sent them to the plastic surgeon we were seeing yesterday anyways. The surgeon was not able to view the X-rays but said the reports indicated her plates did not appear to be fused. She said her colleague would look at the X-rays and pictures she took of Mabry, and likely order a CT scan. If it turns out Mabry has Metopic Craniosynostis, she may need a nasty surgery to unfuse the plates in her skull. We are trying to be hopeful that this will not be the diagnosis and surgery will not be necessary. The surgeon also looked Mabry's nose, and will look at it again in 6 months.