Follow-ups

Hi there! All is well :) Mac went to the pediatrician yesterday, and weighed in at 8 pounds, 7 ounces :) Such a moosecake! He also had his follow-up with the neurologist yesterday, which was very interesting. Dr. Osterling is one of the nicest "specialists" I've ever dealt with. She was genuinely interested in Mac as a whole, not just the seizure piece of Mac. She remembered (or had reviewed her notes beforehand) that Jeff was a teacher and that we had four other kids at home, asked how the other kids were handling things, how our summer was going...really, just not your normal specialist appointment. Generally those are the ones where we wait around for a long time, get 3.37 minutes with said doctor, some rustling behind a curtain happens, and WA-LA! a new plan for my child's healthcare is magically put into place without the opportunity for me to fully understand it before we're ushered out to make another appointment. Very refreshing to feel like she was interested in my input, and took Mac's whole world into account before making recommendations.

Anyway! Since Mac only has seizures when things aren't right with his hydrocephalus, and we're generally either in the hospital during those times, or will be shortly, I was wondering if we even needed to be on the seizure meds daily at this point. She kind of said that her preference would be to keep him on them until his hydrocephalus had been stable for awhile, like 6 months-1 year, but would do a thorough exam and then we could talk more. Apparently he's showing lots of signs of "neuro-irritability". Basically his sweet little brain has been through so much trauma in the last 3 months that it's just, well, irritable, and apparently that can be pretty uncomfortable. She also thought that given what she saw, he'd probably be having seizures if he wasn't on the medication, which was not fun to hear, but made me glad that we had gotten a handle on it before we had to go through the trauma of witnessing frequent seizures. The ones we've seen are plenty. So, she increased his dose according to his weight and we'll go back in 6 months unless we have trouble between now and then. She said that hopefully it will make him a happier baby...he's certainly not the easiest little guy we've ever had (Miles spoiled us). He's very, very sensitive to sound (which doesn't exactly make for good sleeping in a house with 4 other kids), gets very twitchy when burped or has any other quick touches, still needs to be fed in a very specific way...lots of little quirks to our guy :) She was also pretty on top of me to talk to some of his other dr.s about how he's constantly arching his back. I'm not quite sure what it means for him (it can apparently mean lots of things), but every health care type person who's been around him for any length of time has noticed it and commented on it, but she's the first one who has pressed me to figure out why, exactly, he does it. So, I will! She was also a little worried about his eyes and vision, but really couldn't tell me much (obviously), so I am now even more ready to for the opthalmology appointment. Not until August though!

So, stitches out tomorrow! Hurray! I'm always so glad when those are gone, it just seems like it would be uncomfortable. The stares from strangers in public decrease significantly when he doesn't have stitches sticking out of his melon. I kept wanting someone to ask me about them, so I could tell them he had a skateboarding accident...but no one took the bait ;) Word to the wise, people: 9/10 mom's prefer you to just be up front and ask about their kids, instead of just stare at them awkwardly.

Hope that you all have a wonderful weekend!