Today was our first day home with The Baby. Dad goes back to work tomorrow. I don't know if he's more sad, or if I am. I'm also really nervous. C-sections are hard to recover from and I'm crabby, tired and in pain a lot.
In the hospital, one of the pediatric residents thought that The Baby sounded like he had a heart murmur. So, she had the attending come in and check him out. She said she heard an extra heart sound, but it could mean a few things. Most likely, it was just from the valve over the heart that closes once the baby's are born. Before they're born, it lets the blood bypass the lungs, then after they are born it closes up and allows the blood to pass in to the lungs. Sometimes, this just causes a louder sound which could make it seem like there was an extra sound. So, The Baby got a test the day we were to leave to check out his blood pressures. He passed, and everything was just fine. We got to leave on Sunday as usual.
Today, we took him for his first visit with our pediatrician, Dr. Hill. We took all 3 kids with us. It's quite the task getting us all loaded into the minivan quickly.
Dr. Hill checked him out and told us a few things: 1) She did NOT hear a heart murmur, so most likely it was just that valve making a loud sound. 2) He has a pointy ear. 3) He is slightly tongue-tied.
We were excited to hear he doesn't have a heart murmur.
I noticed his ear was pointy in the hospital, but didn't think much of it. She said it's purely cosmetic; there's no reason she thinks we should fix it, but if we want to fix it, the easiest way is to do so with putty and tape in the first 3 weeks of his life. After that, it becomes an expensive surgery. Originally, we said no, we didn't care, but now we are thinking about what The Baby will think of his ear when he's older and if he'll be mad we didn't do this very easy fix in the beginning. Something to think about...
The nurse at Barnes told us she thought he was a little tongue-tied and the attending agreed, though she felt if it wasn't affecting breastfeeding, then we shouldn't worry about clipping it. Dr. Hill also felt it was very slight, it wouldn't affect his speech and if it wasn't affecting breastfeeding, then it would be fine to ignore for now. However, I had started to notice slight pain when breastfeeding and since I'm paying more attention to it right now, it does kind of hurt. So, I'll be calling back about his tongue possibly getting clipped too. I want to nurse him for at least a year and if the tongue tie starts to get in the way at all, I'm okay with clipping it.
The Baby weighs 7 pounds and 1 ounce (just 3 ounces shy of his birth weight!) and he measures 21 inches (1 inch longer than his birth length). He's in the 25th percentile for weight, 90th percentile for height and over 90th for his big ole head (which I still think looks tiny).
This baby is more amazing than I ever could have imagined. I'm already getting a little obsessed with him. He's perfect and absolutely adorable. His hair still cracks me up. He can't have a real bath yet, but his hair needs washed almost everyday, which I am so not used to from the girls, ha!
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