I can't even tell you how concerned I was that I was going to be carrying this child well into my maternity leave. Haha. Thank goodness all my concerns were laid to rest on May 4, 2011 at 5 am, when my water broke. Yay! It was uncanny how similar the story of my labor with Lilia was to my labor with Jaedyn, right down to the time my water broke!Lilia felt much larger to me and all through my pregnancy I was convinced I'd have a humongo baby. Imagine my surprise when she came out weighing only 7 lbs 12 oz and a miniature 19 inches long. What a delicate little thing! Come to find out, it wasn't the baby that made me feel so big, but the size of her swimming pool!Shortly after delivery Lilia began grunting with her breathing and was having retractions with her labored breathing. She kept getting a bluish hue to her lip that concerned the nurses enough that they took her to the nursery to hook her up to the O2 sat monitors. Yes indeed, her sats kept dropping. The pediatrician was finally called in early the next morning and ordered her to remain in the nursery except to feed and requested a consult with the ENT. Who finally made it in at 6pm that night. Poor man, I'm sure had a rough day. He called it right on the spot before he ever even did any procedures and a half hour later confirmed his suspicions with a horribly nasty little scope procedure. My poor baby! They gave us the option of standing in or waiting and I of course was curious about the procedure (which didn't end up being a huge deal except that no mother likes to see her baby cry) and couldn't stand the thought of waiting one more minute to find out what was going on! So I scuttled down the hall in my ... uh ... nothingness of a hospital gown so I could hold Lilia's hand.Laryngomalacia- a weakness/softening of the larynx which causes transient collapse of the airway and makes it more susceptible to irritation. It also manifests with a little horseshoe shaped epiglottis (seen above) which they saw on her scope. GERD is a common exacerbating factor in this with reflux causing irritation which causes further swelling and closure of the airway. Not a hard thing to treat. So what does this change? Little Lilia is on a medication twice a day to prevent GERD and will most likely outgrow this by the age of one. She's doing great. (Though, can someone please explain to me why they flavor the medicine chocolate when that is a common item to cause GERD when consumed by moms and delivered via the breast milk?) One thing that was kinda neat through all this was that this was one of the disorders that Chad learned about this last semester during his SLP studies so he was able to follow all the medical lingo and understand what was being said as we visited with the doctors. Nice to see that expensive schooling paying off :)We're home, we're doing great, and we're adjusting to life as a family of four. Well sorta. My mom, an angel from heaven, has been with us and has been a wonderful help! Jaedyn has been doing great and loving on her baby sister. She speaks in such a sweet voice to her and can't seem to get enough of the baby. She's learning to support the baby's head too :)
