Month: April 2008

Lucas at two months: 11 lbs 10 oz, almost 25 inches long. (Still gaining! Yay!!) Sleeps like a dream during the night, and insists on being cuddled during the day. Gazes at mommy with a look of adoration that would melt steel. Smiles at everything except mommy’s camera. Saves his best smiles for his big brothers. Fiercely opposed to mommy’s blog habit. Good thing he’s so damn cute!

(this photo is was actually taken almost a month ago… he’s changed already!)

Lucas and Tristan have had a lot in common. They’re both long and lean, both good sleepers, both had early trouble gaining weight. This, however, is one where I wish he would take after Simon. I spent a lot of time in Tristan’s first year getting tests done at the children’s hospital for various concerns: an EEG for a weird eyeball-rolling thing to rule out seizures; a chest xray for I don’t remember what; a VCUG and a year of antibiotics for a urinary tract valve issue whose name completely escapes me (Nancy? Surely you remember!); febrile seizure at 2 1/2, resulting in our first 911 call and ambulance ride…Funny how much of these my brain has washed away!! Anyway, we were in the children’s hospital quite a few times with Tristan, and not (touch wood!) once so far with Simon. And here we go with Lucas, at not quite eight weeks old.

It was supposed to be another of our weekly weigh-in appointments for Lucas. Last week, we were in the car on the way home at the actual time of our appointment, so swift and routine have these appointments become, so this week I was fairly confident that scheduling a haircut an hour after the appointment time would give me plenty of travel time.

I had a bad feeling when we walked into the ped’s office and the waiting room was full. I asked the nurse if they were running roughly on schedule and she said they were quite behind because a substitute doctor was taking over while my ped is doing some teaching this week at the Children’s Hospital, and the new doctor is “quite thorough”.

I nearly whooped with joy when the nurse weighed Lucas and he’d gained a whopping 320 grams since last Thursday. That’s 11 oz, double what he was supposed to gain and more than three times what he’s been gaining each week the last month or so. Go Lucas! I attributed it to the formula, but the doctor reminded me that the formula is still only about a quarter of his daily intake, so I must be making some better milk, too. Heh, maybe I’m all the way up to two percent… not quite table cream, but better than skim!

I was still congratulating Lucas on his stellar weight gain as the ped carried on a much more thorough exam than I was expecting. As she was doing so, Lucas spat up on the exam table a few times – copiously, as he is wont to do. We talked a bit about the quantities he spits up and the frequency, both of which have concerned me from the beginning. Twice last week he moved beyond spit up into what I’d call true vomiting, once what seemed like the entire contents of the bottle I had just finished feeding him. When the doctor started explaining a condition called pyloric stenosis, I said I was already familiar with it. Beloved had surgery for it when he was five weeks old, and our ped had already given me some warning signs to watch for — mostly, if Lucas wasn’t seeming to be able to keep *anything* down, or vomiting after each meal, and/or showing signs of dehydration. When I told this substitute ped that Beloved had pyloric stenosis as a baby, she was visibly concerned.

After a minute or two more of questions, she said she would rather be safe than sorry and asked me if I wanted to have the ultrasound done that would conclusively diagnose or eliminate pyloric stenosis. I’m a big fan of better safe than sorry, and said so. She left the room for a minute and came back telling me to go directly to the children’s hospital to have the ultrasound done, which pretty much made my own heart stop. She then said that they’d diagnose him on the spot, and warned me (as if I weren’t already half way to freaksville) that if he did have pyloric stenosis then they would admit Lucas immediately for the routine surgery required to correct the condition.

Immediately. Surgery. On my seven and a half week old baby.

But you know what? I was pretty damn calm leaving for the hospital, because I was pretty sure he didn’t have pyloric stenosis. I’d consulted with Dr Google the first time the subject came up with my ped, and hadn’t seen any of the major warning signs. Still, I was really glad I had restocked the diaper pack this morning, and I stopped at Tim Horton’s for a bagel on the way to the hospital, because I wasn’t really sure when I could expect my next meal. It’s times like these that I’m really glad to be at least partially breastfeeding, too, as I didn’t have anything else to feed the baby.

My butt didn’t even hit a chair in the radiology department at the children’s hospital. We were ushered directly into a room where they spent about 30 minutes examining Lucas’s digestive tract from his esophagus to his kidneys. At one point, they asked me to feed him a couple of ounces of glucose-laced water, the better to see his inner bits at work, and I had to laugh at the vigour with which he gobbled that down. Got a sweet tooth like his daddy, this one does.

And, bless their hearts, they told me on the spot that Lucas does not, in fact, have pyloric stenosis. We still don’t know exactly what is causing all the spitting up, but as of today at least the weight gain issue is under control. We’ll see how he does next week, when he goes for his two month checkup, but I’m greatly reassured. I know Beloved worried about pyloric stenosis every time Lucas spat up, so it’s great to have that eliminated once and for all.

I was home a mere three hours after I left for the original appointment, even though it felt like I had been gone for a week. Have I lately said a “hallelujah” for our medical system? Not a cent out of my pocket and speedy, responsive and efficient care like that. We are lucky indeed.

Needless to say, I missed the hair appointment entirely. And man, do I need that hair cut!