J.R.'s Echo

Hello all, I just wanted to write and update everyone on J.R.'s appointment today. It was a pretty hectic day, J.R. is deciding that he doesn't need to nap as often as he used to, but he's still tired at the same times. So he ends up just crying for an hour and a half this morning until he finally gets tired enough to go to sleep. He then slept for two hours, letting me get about an hour and a half more sleep after being up since 4:45am when I usually don't get up and stay up until 7 or 8. So that was nice. But anyway, Nancy made it in right before 1:30pm, and we left straight away.


I had dressed him with this appointment in mind, in a shirt and pants instead of a onesie and pants, and they had me remove his shirt. It was an ultrasound, so the tech used the gel stuff on him, and she gave me a frog puppet that ribbited the tune of "Old MacDonald" and "Are You Sleeping" when you closed its mouth. That kept his attention for a while. And then they needed him to keep his head turned a certain direction, so another tech came in and held a different toy. That didn't work at first, so I had to switch places with that tech and hold the toy. But he did really well, much better than I expected. He kept trying to grab the wand or the cord leading from it, so Nancy and I each took one of his hands, and she kept his legs still so that he couldn't try to chew on his toes.



Anyway, they did find a heart murmur. The tech finished and brought a pediatric cardiologist in to look at the results. He said the murmur is really small, and that murmurs are really very common, between 3 out of 4 and 80% of babies are born with them. The way he put it, it "was just part of being people," he said. And he said that he didn't see anything that would contribute to him being small. So this test pretty much ruled out a heart murmur as being the cause of his lack of weight gain. His next appointment with his doctor is next Thursday, the 29th, when I figure she will start suggesting other reasons and/or ways to rectify his growth. We are starting to feed him a solid food meal three times a day after Thanksgiving. He's on two meals right now, once we're past the allergy threshold for his new food, I'm going to start him on oatmeal for breakfast, then start adding fruits to it. I'm continuing adding veggies to his rice mixture, which so far, he's tried carrots and green beans and seems to like them both pretty well.



I will update when I know more after his next appointment. In the meantime, enjoy his first picture with Santa.