Itty Bitty SetBack for Itty Bitty Girl

No alarms need to be sounded, but try to tell that to a new Mommy and Daddy. Allie has blood tests run regularly and on Sunday, December 16th they found something wasn't quite right in all of her tests. Basically, her color wasn't as good as it has been and she was working extra hard to breath, so they ran a test to check things. (Okay... ignorate disclaimer here... any medical personnel reading this know that I'm not going to get all this technical jargon right and will not even attempt to, so forgive me on this one). The conclusion was that she needed blood. Basically, red blood cells. The red blood cells carry oxygen, which Allie needs. (Okay... I remember this from 8th grade science class). Allie stays nearly all of the time on 21% oxygen - which is room air, but she still needs to be a bit more steady in the oxygen flow department. The blood they gave her on Sunday will help that as well as help with some of the fluid in her lungs. For those of you that don't know, little Allie has a VSD - Ventricular Septal Defect. This is - in layman's terms - a hole in her heart between the two lower chambers (ventricles) of her heart. Don't panic ... many, many babies have this and in many cases the hole closes on its own. It doesn't appear to be causing Allie a lot of problems and it is too early to do anything with it anyway, but getting this blood and some medicine will help her with the fluid and her breathing. She did get the blood and she started looking better right away. You will notice she had a little IV in her left hand (yep.. right after the bruise started going away). We also had to stop her feedings for the day (she was fed through the IV - we aren't completel cruel you know) and then increase them slowly through the week. We also stopped the bottle feedings for a few days until she could catch back on.


Here is Allie on Sunday, December 16th:




More updates later... I'm still a week behind! So much happens in one week in the world of Allie Lovell, you know!

Good night for now!
Sandy