(no subject)

[rivka]

Alex had her one-year pediatrician's appointment yesterday.

He heard a heart murmur.

This is probably no big deal. He says so ("If there were a serious cardiac abnormality, she would be weak and sickly - which she's obviously not."), my sister the pediatrician says so, and Dr. Google says so. Apparently, it is fairly common for children between the ages of 1 and 5 to have a heart murmur for a while. After I posted a plea for innocuous heart murmur stories to plan_survive yesterday, several people chimed in making them sound utterly unremarkable.

And yet.

We have an appointment with a pediatric cardiologist on the 26th of May. It's possible that she'll be able to diagnose what they call an "innocent murmur" just from listening to Alex's heart, and will send us on our merry way. If not, she'll need to have an echocardiogram, which is an ultrasound of the heart.

I am mostly succeeding in not freaking out about it, but it's definitely on my mind. I am relieved that the cardiologist's scheduler was able to find a cancellation, because originally she offered me an appointment in September. (Can you imagine? Boy, it's a good thing we don't live in Canada, where their evil socialized medicine has led to long waits for medical treatment.)

A heart murmur.

She's still in the 90th percentile for height; frankly, I'm starting to wonder whether she's really mine. Her weight curve has dropped a bit, from about the 75th percentile to the 60th. Her doctor thinks that's normal for the toddler era, when kids' exercise level increases and their interest in food decreases. We had a long, reassuring talk about the vagaries of the toddler appetite. Alex eats a good variety of food, but the quantities are often minute. His analysis essentially boiled down to this: toddlers don't starve to death, but we have no idea why not.

He said that we should just continue to offer a variety of healthy foods, and not stress about whether or not she eats them. Most of the toddler feeding problems he sees result from parents trying to compensate for poor intake, either by letting the child drink their meals (tons of juice or milk) or by filling them up with junk food because "at least she's eating something." I think we can avoid both of those traps.

He talked about accident prevention ("this is something that worries me far more than her heart murmur..."), the advisability of weaning her to a cup by fifteen months (already on my agenda), developmental milestones (he was impressed that she can feed herself if handed a spoonful of food), and discipline (he confirmed our opinion that it's time to start having some gentle expectations). He referred us to an ophthalmologist, because both Michael and I had strabismus as children, but said we didn't need to worry about seeing a dentist until she's three.

Then he sent us to the lab, where Alex had a blood draw (for a blood lead level, although they also do a CBC) and two vaccinations. That part was hard. When she was an infant, she'd stop crying as soon as I picked her up after her shots. Now it isn't like that. She fears, and then afterward she resents. The blood draw was particularly hard, because they stuck her finger and then had to keep squeezing and squeezing to pull blood up in the capillary tube. Yeesh. I was relieved that, in contrast to kcobweb's account of three extra staff people coming into the room to hold her baby down, Alex got to sit on my lap and be restrained by me and Michael. I wrapped my arms around her arms and chest and tucked her feet between my knees, and Michael held her legs still for the shots. Poor baby, she wore herself out with the effort of coping, and fell asleep in the car on the way home.

Comments

[kate_nepveu]

Additional innocuous heart murmur story: I went until 25 or so before anyone noticed mine. Mitral valve prolapse, ditto with the preventative antibiotics, yearly EKG and every-two-years echo. No effects whatsoever.

If they have to do an echo, it might be a bit uncomfortable--I imagine that you had something like it during your pregnancy, but to get good views of the heart they need to press against the ribs, which I definitely feel, especially when they do it over breast tissue. So that might not be fun for Alex, but there's no bruising after or anything.

Hope all comes out well.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I think probably they would give her a sedative for the procedure. They often do that for babies, even when the procedure is noninvasive, to relieve their fear and help them hold appropriately still.

[kate_nepveu]

Ah yes. And also, I remembered in the middle of the night, babies are *smaller* and so maybe they won't have to press as hard to get that close to the heart.