Quirks

So Annie's feet get really cold at night. We put a sleeper with feet and warm fuzzy socks on her every night, and in the morning they are so cold they're white. The bottoms of her legs are always cold too. The rest of her is fine. It only happens at night, during the day they're fine. I didn't really think too much of it, until the day Paul was taking her out of her car seat and noticed that the lower part of her legs were blue. Huh. So we mentioned it to our pediatrician at her 4-month check-up. She was a little concerned, especially because for some reason at the appointment her feet were hot and bright purple/pink. I told her that was unusual, that we hadn't seen that before. She asked if Raynauds runs in our family and I told her I had never heard anything like that so I didn't think so. So she did lots of pulse-checking and poking around her legs and belly and decided that maybe it would be best to get an ultrasound to check things out, make sure nothing was getting cut off on the way down to her legs.

My mom came with me to the ultrasound on Tuesday. It took forever. They took a ton of pictures of her insides, all around her belly. The first technician asked me to tell her why my doctor wanted us there, because she said she was a bit confused by her notes. I explained what the problem was and told her she was wondering if her aorta is being cut off somewhere in her groin area. She responded, "but she hasn't felt any masses or anything?" I had been really good about not worrying up to that point, telling myself it was most likely nothing to worry about. But as soon as she said the word "masses" a million worries flooded to the front of my mind. "Great," I thought to myself. "Here we go."

The exam took forever. The first technician couldn't find one of her ovaries so she went to get someone to take another look. Annie was so patient through the first part, which took about 45 minutes, but she was getting really tired and hungry, plus we had to hold her arms and legs down because she kept grabbing the wand cord, so she screamed through the second half. Poor baby! We finally got out of there about two and a half hours after we got there. And then I waited for 2 days, the word "masses" floating around my brains the whole time.

I talked to the doctor last night, and she said the results looked good. They didn't really find anything. Phew! But she did say they said it was a "suboptimal view" since they couldn't see everything in her belly due to "bowel gas." Surprise, surprise. Especially since she hadn't pooped in a few days! So to be safe she called a pediatric cardiologist. He said she's most likely fine, since the pulse and oxygen counts were fine. But he wants us to schedule an appointment to come in, just to be safe. It will probably be a few months before we can get in, but I'm not going to worry until then. I think she probably just gets cold feet. I am glad that our doctor is so thorough though. Nice to know she doesn't just brush things off! I'm going to need to learn to be more like her though. As I learned from my "cyst that could have been a blood clot" incident back when I was pregnant, I really need to learn to pay more attention to these things and not just brush them off as nothing! You really never know.

So yeah, the poop thing. That was Tuesday, and now it's Friday, still no poop. It's been 7 days! It's normal for a breastfed baby to go a few days, even 5 or 6 in between poops (formula-fed babies poop once or twice a day!) But she usually poops every 2 or 3 days, so 7 was getting a little ridiculous. And I'll tell you what. Her gas stinks. It could knock you over at this point. Also: I'm a little afraid of what a 7-day poop is going to look like. The 2 or 3 day poops are pretty explosive.

Our doctor gave us a few options. Pear juice sounded the best to me. Unfortunately, I just tried giving it to her and she hates it! She kept making that baby "what the hell is this crap?" face and pushing it away. I tried telling her that this was her most pleasant option, but she didn't listen. So now we're going to try the baking soda bath. I hope that works, because otherwise we will need to "take her temperature." Which really isn't so bad, we have to do that every once in a while anyway, but doesn't pear juice sound so much better??

Tell this kid to poop already!