Everything is fine, but I did have a bit of a scare today. Apparently both the results from a head ultrasound and a heart scan for Kalyssa came back with some concerns. There was an area on the head ultrasound that was questioned as a blood clot, but the doctor reviewed this scan herself and having seen many preemie head scans over her career, she believes it is normal and not anything to worry over. However, she had results from St. Vincent’s on Kalyssa’s heart scan that are minor concerns. She had conflicting reports though and I had to wait a few hours to find out what exactly was up with her heart. It appears that Kalyssa has two small holes in her heart. I guess it is typical for babies to have them and that often they close up within the first year of life. There is one between the Atria sections of her heart that has up to a 90% probability of closing up and one between her right and left ventricals that has a 75% chance of closing up. Because the report lists this hole as very small and is only asking for a follow-up heart scan in 6 months Kalyssa’s doctor believes there is every chance that it is super tiny and will fall in that 75%. The additional good news is that these holes are not something that will require surgery or even cause Kalyssa a lot of problems if they should not close up. She said that likely Kalyssa would only need to be cautious when surgery, major injuries or dental procedures were performed on her. In other words, she’d be one of those people that would have to take antibiotics to prevent infection if she goes to the dentist or has any surgery. I breathed a sigh of relief when she said that! We are still praying that her holes will heal up, but it is good to know that she won’t have more than a slight murmur and antibiotics to deal with if one or the other doesn’t heal up completely in her first year.
Other good news is that they were switching Kalyssa to all bottle feeds today! That is a huge step to bringing her home one of these days … I was there after her third bottle feeding in a row yesterday and they said she was a little tired for it, but she did manage to take the whole bottle . If she successfully took in a fourth bottle at her 6PM feeding they were going to remove the nasal gavage tube. All of her other wires etc. at this point are just to monitors for heartbeat etc. So … we are getting very close to bringing her home. I’m taking the car seats and car to our car dealer today to make sure we have them installed as well as we can for her journey home. I have an older car that only has one of the car seat safety latches in the middle. I’m hoping the dealership can install one or two more on the sides so that both of my baby girls can be safe in the car.
On the evening of April 2nd Kalyssa weighed in at 4 lbs 9 ozs.
