From Boog's beginning until now.

     Boog was due in late November 2010. At a check-up, the doctor noticed she seemed to not have grown at all since the last ultrasound. He was worried my placenta had begun to deteriorate, so he sent me to the hospital for an induction. I was at 37 weeks gestation, considered full term, and we were a go. They began the induction that night, around 5 pm. I began pushing 24 hours later. After four hours of pushing, I had to have an emergency c-section. A was not making any progress. Forty more minutes passed and she was born at 9:40 pm. She was 7lbs2.5oz, 19.5 inches long and had a head full of hair.
     I'm a little hazy about the next hour in recovery, but they rolled me in to see her at 11 pm where she was hooked up to heart monitors and oxygen sensors. The next morning the pediatrician came to talk to us, told us our brand new baby girl was born with a hole in her heart and pneumonia  in her right lung. We get confirmation that the hole is minor, and she gets treated for the pneumonia, has a bout of jaundice while in the NICU, and is released from the hospital at nine days old.
     At one month old, I noticed her head was a bit flat in back and brought her to the ped (as are most first time moms I was a tad over cautious) where he said the shape would be fine in time but the size was small, after checking her again at two months old, it was still small, so we get her head checked out and it has no physical issues. Next step is to have the neurologist check her out and make sure nothing else is wrong and she is just going at her own pace. Also at one month old, she gets to meet the cardiologist for her heart where he confirms it is a small ventricular septal defect that we will watch that will likely never need surgery. While at this appointment he takes a chest x-ray as is routine. All is well.
     We take her back to the cardiologist for a check of her heart and everything goes as expected, she is growing well despite hovering around the 15th percentile. At the end, her doc says she's great but oh, there is something we need to talk to you about. He shows us the x-ray from her first visit and the one from that days. There is a noticeable shadow on her lung from one month old. The current one has show even more shadow that the one from four months before, and her cardio wants a radiologist to look at the films.  The radiologist does, and lets the ped know she should have her chest further examined. She then gets a CT scan and we are referred to a pediatric surgeon. We take A to the consult. She is diagnosed with a Right side congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Her surgeon wants to see her again in three months to assess her condition.

After getting home, I do some research and find out that her condition is common yet not so common. How can that be, you might ask? Well, simple. CDH (congenital diaphragmatic hernia) occurs in about 1 in 2500 babies.  That is the common part. The rare part is that approximately 50% of babies born with CDH don't make it. Of the remaining half, the majority of those (90% or so) babies have complications of a varying range. So A has a CDH. Her is on the right and looks to be towards the back. The good news and what makes her relatively rare is that she has not been impeded in any way by this. Yay!

http://www.cdhsupport.org/cdh.php
I found this site last night and it's very educational.


So, there we have it. That is the story of our Two Foot Tyrant.