Last week, April 6th, Ella had her appointment with the cardiologist. I had asked my sister how long her appointment had taken (she also had to take her daughter in to the cardiologist for a follow up appointment for a heart murmur) and she said it was real quick. So I took Jameson with me, and had other appointments planned for later in the day. Not so for us. After having to wait 20 minutes to even be checked in (Kevin’s employer never sent Ella’s information to the insurance) our appointment lasted almost 3 hours. Try keeping a 2 year old in an ultrasound room for 2 hours without having him turn on the lights, or get into anything. Not so fun. He will not be coming in 6 weeks for her follow-up.

She weighed 9lbs. 4oz. (with a diaper and binki) which means she gained almost 2 lbs. since coming home. She is also 21.26″ long. The found her results were about the same from the hospital, which is good. She is not getting worse or having her heart overwork. Her pulmonary valve is  slightly narrowed, which means it has to work harder to pump the blood out to her lungs. She also has a medium size hole between the top left and right chambers of her heart. This means the blood can flow back and forth between them. So her left side is receiving more blood than it should, and then is having to pump it out of a narrow valve. They are watching to make sure that left side doesn’t become swollen or show any signs of being over worked. For now, everything looks good. There are no outward signs if there is a problem. They just told me to watch if she has a hard time eating for long periods of time, that might be a sign. If she were to have to take breaks every few minutes rather than eating a full feeding. She will have to go back in 6 weeks for more ultrasounds, and as she grows, the visits will be spaced further apart. The doctors are hoping these issues fix themselves, but they wouldn’t consider doing anything until she was older if it was needed. The doctor also told me that she wouldn’t necessarily need surgery either. There are ways where they can go in through a vein in her leg that would lead to her heart, and they could patch her hole that way. It would require an overnight stay and a band-aide on her leg. So we’ll just wait and see. Hopefully her heart heals itself over time and no treatment will be needed.