Finally took Nate to a pediatric cardiologist yesterday to check up on the heart murmur he was diagnosed with at birth. The doc was at Brooklyn Hospital which is located a good 15 minutes' walk from the nearest bus stop. That's the Achille's heel of Ft. Greene, if you ask me. But anyway. The nurses there weighed him (17.5 lb.! f'n heavy!) and measured him (26.75 in.! huge!) and checked the oxygen saturation of his blood (100! apparently that's adequate!) Then they stuck stickers all over his naked little torso and attached alligator-clamped wires to the stickers, thus turning him into one of those pod-babies whose energy is destined to be harvested by The Machines. Except cuter; you can see the cell-phone pic here.
The take-away is that he's fine. He still has a couple of pin-sized holes in his ventricular septum, but they'll probably heal up over time, and even if they don't, nothing could or should be done about them. The doc referred to the defects as "squeakers" because they sound like a tiny "squeak" during the heartbeat, instead of a big whoosh of a more serious heart murmur.
The saddest tidbit (that's the title of my new children's book, BTW: The Saddest Tidbit) is that the doc and nurses kept remarking on Nate's great size and robustness. Not because he's a fat baby (which he is) but because the babies they usually see are seriously premature and thus very weak and tiny. To his credit Nate was happy and smiling throughout the procedure, even when his mom was on the verge of starting to maybe freak out a little.
In closing I thought I'd throw out here a Thing I Never Thought I'd Have To Say:
"Stop rubbing cheese on your feet."
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2 comments:
H crap! Nate is bigger than 6 month (and 10 day) Phineas, who weighed in at almost 15lbs yesterday (and 27"). Phin is a petit lil' man; sort of surprising since he was 8lbs 3oz at birth. I am going to see if we can't catch up with young Nate...
Did you say that to Scott?
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