Our First Trip to the Pediatrician

For the first part of our story, click these...
1. The Beginning of it All
2. The Nagging Begins
3. The Nagging Continued
4. The Phone Call
5. Our Options
6. The News
7. The Best News Ever!
8. The Big Question
9. Sharing the Good News
10. It's Baby Time!!
11. The Birth Part 1
12. The Birth Part 2: Happy Birthday Lil' Chris!!

Last time, I left off when Lil' Chris was born, so here are the first couple of weeks following...

The whole time we were in the hospital after he was born, they kept saying he was doing great! He was eating and peeing and pooping like any other baby. They told us that one sign of CF is when they don't poop and then problems arise, but he had no problem with that. So of course we only thought the best, thinking and hoping and praying that he didn't have CF.

When we finally went home, he was so peaceful and quiet. He was even quiet when he was born, he barely cried! A week went by like nothing was wrong. Then we got a phone call saying that they only found one mutation of the CF gene. Which meant he was only a carrier. So of course we were relieved, but they still wanted us to make an appointment with the CF Clinic for some reason. So the earliest appointment I could get was in another 2 weeks.

Then another week went by. I started to notice that he was hungry A LOT and pooping A LOT! It seemed as though he would still be hungry as soon as I just got done feeding him! And then when I was putting him in the outfit that he wore home from the hospital, it seemed a lot bigger on him than it did 2 weeks ago. They always say that babies tend to lose weight, so I thought maybe that was why. Then we got another phone call saying that the lab messed up the first time. They actually found 2 mutations. But they wouldn't tell us anything more than that. They just said to keep the appointment we had scheduled at the CF Clinic and they would explain everything there. So, we still weren't sure if he had CF or not. We hadn't done a lot of research on it yet, b/c we wanted to believe that there was nothing wrong with our baby.

The next day, we went to the pediatrician for his 2 week check up. The nurse weighed him and everything, and then we waited for the doctor to come in. When she did, she asked us lots of questions. I told her how he is always hungry and then she asked how many times a day he was pooping. We said like 10. The look on her face....I knew something was wrong. She practically ran out the door, leaving us to wonder what was wrong. Then she flew back in asking us if we could go to the CF Clinic in about an hour. Chris and I looked at each other like "Why? What's wrong with our baby, he seems fine?" We said "I guess", but it takes about an hour to get there, so we had to go straight from there. I asked her what the problem was, and she said that he shouldn't be pooping that many times a day. Of course as new parents, we had no clue. We just thought all babies pooped a lot! She also said that he had lost over a pound in weight since he was born, which was also a sign of CF. I came right out and asked her before we left, if she thought he had CF, she didn't really give an answer...which scared the crap out of us! Before we walked out, she looked at us and said, "I can't believe how well you guys are taking this!" We just looked at each other like "Taking what? You haven't told us anything! We don't know what's going on!"

So, we rushed out of there and off to the hospital we went. We didn't know what to think. I just remember Chris calling his family and me calling my sister D and telling her to pray and to call my dad and tell him to pray that nothing was wrong and that he doesn't have CF. But deep down, Chris and I knew something must be wrong if the doctor was panicking and made us rush to the hospital.

I think we were just both numb and didn't say much the whole loooooong ride there.
M