Doctors Doctors

Our sweet baby girl has had a couple of doctors appointments the past couple of weeks, that I need to write an update on. My attitude kind of stunk after the 2nd appointment, so I needed to wait til it adjusted. :)

Her first appointment was with her surgeon, Dr. Letton. As a parent, it is a pretty overwhelming feeling seeing the doctor who did such great work on your child. How do you even begin to express your gratitude? I know, ultimately, God's hand was ALL over McKinley during her birth, surgery and healing process... but I believe that God used Dr. Letton in HUGE ways. Anyway, its overwhelming to me. He's great.

The appointment went well. Her belly button is alittle softer than he would like, but he thinks it could change. He just wants us to watch it for a hernia. Im not sure what that would look like, but as long as it stays looking the same.. I will assume we are good. :) We will go back and see him when she is 6 months old and then when she is a year old. If all is well, he will release us. I fully expect that to be the case.

Our second appointment was with the her otologist. He comes very highly recommended and seems wonderful. Because one of my very closest friends is an ENT resident, I felt pretty prepared for this appointment. And much of the information that her ear specialist told us was just as I expected. Basically, there is not much we can do right now. She will have a CT scan of her ear when she is 3 or 4. She will be old enough to understand to lay still for a bit of time. They can do sedation, but if we do not have to, obviously that would be the way we would want to go. She definitely does not have an ear canal.. but we will see if all the inner workings are there. If we choose to do plastic surgery, that wont happen until she is 6 or so... because she is still growing so much now. Dr. Berryhill did say that girls with this condition (which is rare.. 1 in 1000 or so), have a much easier time than boys. They can cover their ear with their hair, etc. He said if she has good hearing with her other ear, (which is where my bad attitude came from.. I will discuss that in a bit), she will have no problems with speech, she will just struggle to know where sound is coming from. She will have to sit close to the front of the class, etc. Now, for someone that likes to fix a problem immediately.. this will definitely serve as a lesson in patience.

We do have to go back every 6 months to do a hearing test on her "good" ear. He said, it is important to make sure that the test in the hospital wasn't a false positive. Ummmm. I'm sorry.. that never entered my realm of thinking. I assumed that because she passed the hearing test in the hospital that she could hear from her ear. He told us that "even deaf babies startle". Just soooooooo not even what I was expecting to hear. So, I asked him if he thought that she couldnt hear? He said, he did not think that was the case, but he just wanted to make sure. Which I completely understand.... but that is where I became overwhelmed.

We all REALLY do think that she can hear.. but I will be anxious to see what the hearing test in January shows.

Keep praying for our sweet little girl! We go to her pediatrician in a week for her 2 month appointment! TWO MONTHS.. how can that be?!?!

Now, when we were in the hospital