Tag: months

Ellie is 7 months old!  She is such a happy girl.  Whenever we go out, she smiles at everyone so she gets lots of attention.  She is beginning to sit up for a few minutes at a time.  She has been wanting to sit up for months now (it looked like she was doing crunches) so I’m sure she’s glad to finally see the world from an upright position.

We went back to the doctor recently to get a check up on her ears.  There was still a little residual fluid from the last ear infection, but otherwise, looked good.  She weighed 16 lbs 4 oz.

Today, we went to the pediatric cardiologist to check up on her congenital heart defect.  She still has the ASD.  It’s very small (5 mm), but it should have closed up by now.  At this point, the only thing we’ll do is continue to get a check up by the cardiologist so he can monitor it.  Other than that, there’s no reason to treat her any differently.  If, by some reason, she is in the hospital one day and needs an IV, we would need to caution the staff that she does have a heart defect.  There’s a very rare chance that oxygen could enter the IV, and because the two chambers of her heart are connected, could make its way to the brain.  I can’t remember the name of that condition, but it’s bad.  At any rate, she’ll most likely have day surgery (by cardiac catheterization, not open-heart surgery) when she’s about 5 years old to close the hole.  The doctor said the device used to close the hole is made perfectly for her case.  Apparently, the hole in her heart is in the center of the wall separating the two chambers, so there is plenty of room on all sides to insert this device.

If you didn’t want to know all the details, I’m sorry.  I’m recording all this information because it’s fresh.  I know that in two years time when we go back for a check up, I will have forgotten all these details.  Like most blogs, I use this place as a record!