Our Little Heart

I just wanted to give a quick update on Samantha. We had an appointment this morning with a second Cardiologist to follow up on a couple issues the pediatrician who saw her at birth wanted to monitor on her. One was a murmur caused by an abnormal PDA, a valve that is open on all children while they are in the womb, which usually closes itself off between 72 hours and 3 weeks of birth. The cardiologist today told us that that valve has completely sealed itself off and is fine. The second issue was something that the first cardiologist found while monitoring the PDA. He said he didn’t believe there was an issue but he noticed an irregularity in her QT Interval and wanted to monitor it. Apparently, in real simple terms, the QT interval is the rate at which the heart recharges itself. So a long QT interval, which is what he was watching, means the heart is not recharging itself as fast as it should. Long QT intervals are leading causes in SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome) as well as seizures and other wonderful things no one should have to endure. However, after meeting with the cardiologist today, that worry has sort of been put to rest. Today’s cardiologist gave Samantha’s little heart virtually a clean bill of health. He did notice an “Innocent murmur” which he explained as something that 50 percent of children have and that typically seals itself off by 6 to 12 months. But other then that everything was perfect, which was great news for us to hear!

We are still meeting with the original cardiologist on Friday so he can run his tests and to hear what he has to say but the second opinion this morning provided somewhat of a huge release of tension. We are not going to rest easy until after Friday’s appointment but we feel a bit more relieved and are much more confident with the second doctor then the first and not only because he told us what we were hoping to hear. The doctor today ran more tests, as well as give really good explanations as to what was going on and covered everything thoroughly. We didn’t leave with more questions then we came in with as we did after our first appointment with the other guy. Besides the first doctor had a slight arrogance about him, which is quickly and easily explained off due to the fact that he’s an admitted University of Michigan graduate (nice job Badgers).

Also, Samantha weighed in at 7 lbs 8.8 oz which is up a pound from last week and a pound and a half since birth. They also measured her length today at 21 inches which is a half inch longer then birth as well.