Follow-Ups

On Friday, Tera had the last of her follow-up appointments. I may or may not have mentioned that the Ophthamologist cleared her earlier this month, saying that the vessels in her retina are mature and that there is no need for her to come back unless, of course, we find other vision issues that need his attention.

Friday's follow-up was with the Cardiologist to see if the ever-looming PDA had finally disappeared. The whole family drove up Thursday night and spent the night with Sam and Alicia. Barry took Canon to get new tires for my car while Tera and I went to the doctor. I'm continually amazed at how quiet Tera is at these doctors' appointments. She wiggles a lot but rarely cries or gets upset, despite the pokes and prods that come with every appointment. Maybe she really is just used to it. I had to give her a bottle while the Cardiologist did the Echocardiogram. She was squirming so much, it was making her heart race!

The short version of Tera's follow-up is that she is, as expected, "perfectly healthy." The nurse checked her oxygen saturation. Even while she drank her bottle (which was the number one cause of her de-sats in the hospital) she was satting 100%. I know this was a number we wanted to avoid when she needed additional oxygen to breathe, but 100% is what you want to see people satting when they're breathing room air. When Tera satted 100% in her Isolette, it meant that she needed less oxygen. Staying at 100% too long could cause eye damage. Luckily, that potential problem is no longer potential . . . and no longer a problem!

The PDA is also completely gone! No more follow-ups needed for that, which is a relief. After I left this doctor's office and headed down the hall to the Neonatologist's office to get his evaluation, the Cardiologist came back to find me to tell me of one minor issue. An "interval" of her heart had measured a little bit long. He says that it's probably an inaccurate measurement because it's hard to get a good read on such a small heart. Nonetheless, we'll need to bring her back in a couple of years to have everything checked again . . . just to be sure. If it's not worth worrying about for two years, then I'm still going with the initial "perfectly healthy" evaluation he gave us.

And, of course, what most people want to know about: Tera's size. She weighed 9 pounds 5.8 ounces at the appointment, right on track with her weight gain in weeks passed. She's also 22 inches long, which means she's lengthened about an inch and a half since we came home. I'm not sure of the percentiles for these measurements. My logical reasoning skills tell me that they are in the low numbers for a four month old (maybe even negative numbers) and probably pretty average for a one month old.

I mentioned earlier that I walked to the Neonatologist's office after Tera's first appointment. As luck would have it, her Neonatologist left for a meeting just before we got there. Because he doesn't schedule appointments, we just have to try to be at the hospital at the same time he is. His secretary told us that he would be back Sunday evening at 5:00, so we made plans to come back then. (When we came back on Sunday, we learned that he had swapped his Call time that night with another Neonatologist. Everyone seemed a little surprised that we were trying to follow-up with him, so Barry and I decided that there was really no need to continue to try to meet with him. Every other doctor has given Tera a clean bill of health, so we're thinking he won't tell us anything different.)

After Tera's appointment, we drove a little further north to Smith Lake, Barry's absolute favorite place to be. I thought that I left my camera at home, but I found it in Tera's diaper bag after we got back home. Needless to say, I didn't get many pictures.

Big Mom and Debbie were excited to get to hold Tera for the first time, and Nonna fed her several times throughout the weekend. Canon even held Tera for the first time. We were sitting on the bed with Poppa watching a movie, and Canon said that he wanted to hold her. I put Tera is his lap, and he just watched her for a few minutes. He is soooo sweet to her. He's started giving her hugs and kisses several times a day. When we ride in the car, he looks at her and smiles and talks to her. The other day, when I picked him up from school, another child was trying to reach into her car seat (don't worry, she didn't touch Tera!), and Canon said "That's my sister!" I loved it, of course!


So Canon was holding Tera on the bed, and Barry walked in the room. Without thinking, Canon tried to jump up to go see his dad. Tera did a slight Forward Bend before I grabbed her so that Canon could go see his Daddy! He hasn't held her since.
Overall, we had a great time at the lake, but just as with going to my parents' house, the weekends are a lot harder than they used to be! It's part of parenthood, I guess.