9 month wellness check

Dear ones,

Here we go again! After spending 4.5 months in Michigan with doctors in Mt. Pleasant, Grand Rapids, and Royal Oak, we are once again starting fresh with new doctors. When we were first leaving KU Med, the NICU social worker and the discharge coordinator helped us figure out what doctors we needed and who was in network under our insurance. Aaron and I were already nervous about bringing Elle home (especially at the end of cold and flu season) and having made contact with doctors beforehand made the transition from Kansas to Michigan much easier. 
 

We have fun together.

 This time around, rather than starting from scratch, we were fortunate enough to have a personal referral from one of Aaron's colleagues in the philosophy department. Both fortunately and unfortunately, he and his wife also had a difficult story about the early birth of their daughter several years ago and he was very familiar with the extensive medical care needed. On his recommendation, I called the Pediatric Associates of Williamsburg a couple weeks before we left Michigan and set up Elle's 9 month wellness check for the day after our insurance coverage at W&M began. That day was today!

After filling out the big stack of paperwork that naturally comes with Elle's 'new patient' status, we met with our new pediatrician, Dr. L. She was warm, friendly, and we liked her immediately. She started off by asking us when we moved here from Kansas (the first question in the paperwork is 'What hospital/where was your child born?') and that, of course, launched us into our bizarre story. We went through the paperwork together, discussing all major medical challenges Elle has faced in the last 9 months, and while I knew there would come a point where it would be important to mention Mina, it still caught me off guard when I heard myself say her name. I almost felt embarrassed because I started to cry and Dr. L immediately turned and said, "I understand your pain." She told us that she had lost her baby boy at 24 weeks and showed us a tattoo of his tiny footprints on her right foot. She turned a moment of heartbreak into one of understanding and shared grief. It is hard to say you've lost a baby out loud, but it is so helpful to know there are others carrying the same kind of loss.

This sleepy head was a little cranky after her TDAP shot.

We continued on with Elle's appointment and got her weight and length. At her last appointment in Michigan at the end of July, she weighed 9lbs, 2oz and today she is 9lbs, 14oz (keep in mind, she was 5lbs,11oz when we left the hospital)! She also grew from 23-1/4 inch to 24-1/4 inches in the same amount of time! That news alone is enough to lift our spirits after filling out the 9 month milestone checklist with questions like 'Can your child  clap their hands? roll over? sit up by themselves? stand supporting themselves? with no, no, no, no, and no. We know Elle is on her own timeline and that, all things considered, she is doing remarkably well, but it is still gives us a moment's pause to think about where she 'should' be. Thankfully, this team of doctors is very familiar with babies like Elle and Dr. L was incredibly encouraging. Like every good teacher at a parent-teacher conference, she sandwiched her observations - a positive (Elle has great head/neck control!), a concern (I'd like to see her gain more weight), and another positive (She is visually engaged and tracking well!).

Now that we have a PCP (Primary Care Physician) for Elle, the next step is setting up the rest of the team. Dr. L put me in touch with the referral coordinator at the office who will make contact and set up appointments with a neurologist (brain), a pulmonologist (lungs), an ophthalmologist (eyes), and a GI (gastrointestinal) specialist (stomach/intestines). Elle will be taken care of from head to toe, inside and out! Dr. L also put in a call to CDR (Child Development Resources) of Virginia, who do home care visits and work on early intervention. It is likely that we will have to make the drive to Norfolk for at least some of these doctors' appointments, but I welcome the 45 minute drive there versus the 2.5 hour drive we were making every other week in Michigan!

So we are back on track now. There was a nerve-racking two weeks where we were without insurance coverage and Elle got a slight cold in the middle of August, but we are starting a new month with new doctors and new insurance. There will be many more appointments with shots and paperwork and waiting rooms and labs and we can only pray for more great doctors, more great numbers, and more great news. Here we go again!

Love,
Anya