Matters Of Kobi's Heart

Kobi had his 4 month well baby appointment yesterday. I know I already expressed my shock about the fact that he indeed is 4 months already.

He is doing remarkably well.

If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen that my little bear has been scheduled on and off with a Pediatric Cardiologist. I had not blogged about what was going on. Not because I didn’t want to share but because I had been too tired to blog.

So let me give you a little background.

Right after he was born they let me see him and then they gave him to my hubby and they went and cleaned him off.

Once they rolled me into the post-op room I could hear them whispering and poking at him. Apparently they were concerned with his breathing. Not the lack there of but the rapid pace of it.

They couldn’t figure out why he was breathing so fast. They checked his oxygen levels and gave me instructions to watch his nostrils for flaring and to make sure his lips don’t turn blue.

Yeah. Scary.

They didn’t think it was anything to worry about but of course I didn’t sleep at all because I was on nostril watching duty.

He never showed any signs of struggling to breath he just seemed to breath fast…and loud.

Very loud.

Almost like he was congested. Funny because Lael had the same problem and she was diagnosed with Tracheomalacia (underdeveloped cartilage in her tracheas) when she was a baby.

I didn’t say anything because they were convinced it would go away.

But it didn’t.

When I took him in for his 2 and 6 week checkups they started to get concerned.

I took him in for his 2 month checkup and they decided that his breathing hadn’t gotten any better and they wanted him to see a Cardiologist. That day.

They did an Echo and EKG on his heart and the results showed that he has an extra vessel that leads to somewhere. They aren’t sure where. Also, his left ventricle is on a scale of 1 to 10 ten 1 being the smallest and 10 being the largest, he’s a 10. That means if it got any bigger it would larger than normal. Does that make sense? So it’s big but not quite bigger than normal…yet.

Of course this drove me into a fit of what if’s. But I remained calm.

From then we went back and forth between his Pediatrician and the Cardiologist. We also had an appointment with the ENT doctor who diagnosed my baby with Laryngomalacia (in which the soft, immature cartilage of the upper larynx collapses inward).

Almost the same thing Lael had. However, it didn’t explain why he was breathing fast, just why he was breathing loud.

Blah, Blah, fast forward to a few more appointments.

The conclusion: He still breaths loud (he’ll grow out of it just like Lael did). They still don’t know why he breaths fast or if it’s related to his heart at all. They aren’t sure where the extra vessel is going but they would have to do a CAT Scan and they don’t want to put him through that. I agree.

So now we just wait.

He is super healthy otherwise and that is the main reason they are not concerned. He is growing and is right on target developmentally.

He is 15.4 lbs and 25 inches. He’s not quite as big as the 4 month old girl we saw yesterday that was 21 pounds but he is just fine.