Ten Pound Tubster

The big news in our house today is that Bobby now weighs over 10 pounds - quite an accomplishment for a baby who struggled to gain any weight just over a month ago. For now, most of the weight gain appears to be in his cheeks and tummy. We're hoping that eventually evens out.

This Wednesday we will find out the date for his heart surgery. After more consultations, it seems that our risk of having to do the more complicated repair is higher than we believed in the last entry. Still, complicated or no, it should work and should allow Bobby to have an active life.

He is definitely feeling the weight of his heart failure these days. He's sleeping less, needing comfort more. The first hot days of summer were very hard for him. That seems to have improved now that we've lowered the dosage on his diuretic, installed our air conditioners for the season, and bought him a bunch of cutie new summer clothes. Our 10 week baby wears a size newborn pant, is close to belly busting out of a 0-3 month shirt and needs a preemie sun hat. Again, we're hoping that eventually evens out.

Speaking of head sizes, our pediatrician mentioned at our 2 month visit that Bobby's head was growing slower than normal which might indicate a problem with brain development. Of course, that scared us both, led me to spend hours reading about microencephaly, and fed right into our fears that Bobby has one of the more severe cases of Ds, meaning slower development and less upside. At the next visit, we asked about this again and our pediatrician said 'Did I say that? I'm sorry. That measurement was an outlier." We love our pediatrician - she has been wonderfully involved in Bobby's care and is our most trusted resource. Yet at that moment, I wanted to scream. Just another lesson, I think, that we need to keep focused on the long run and not worry about the day to day bumps in the road.