Weighty worries

We had our monthly visit from the community nurse today and Jessica has lost a little weight and is back down to 11.64kg (25lb 9.5oz).  Like most toddlers, she goes through phases of being a picky eater and other times she will eat really well.  Weight-gain wise it often feels like she takes three steps forward and then two back and it is easy to start worrying about her weight when she doesn’t seem to be gaining very much or losing weight but looking back to just before her second birthday, she has gained 780g overall and is just about managing to stay on or above the 25th centile.  The community nurse is not particularly concerned about her weight – it is just us as parents who tend to worry about these things!  Sats-wise though she is staying fairly stable – today her sats were 77-81 which is fairly standard for Jessica.

One of the reasons for her weight loss may be because she has been teething recently but the last two molars have now appeared and Jessica now has her full set of milk teeth.  We had a few unsettled nights as a result of teething but this is now much better.

Jessica has been enjoying spending lots of time with family over the last week – Auntie Fizz and cousins Ebony and Erin came to stay last week and we had trips to the Museum of Childhood and did some baking (Jessica particularly enjoyed spooning cake mix into paper cases and then eating it before it could go in the oven!) and some crafts (making a birthday card for Grandma).  Godmummy Gillian also came to stay as it was Sophie’s christening yesterday and Jessica enjoyed seeing lots of family and all her godparents there.

CHD Awareness Week 2014

Today is the beginning of congenital heart defect (CHD) awareness week and so we have put together a video summarising Jessica’s journey so far in order to help raise awareness.

Here are a few facts about CHD:

• Approximately 1 in 100 babies are born with a CHD. Some are detected at the 20 week scan although others are not detected until after birth. Several heart groups have been campaigning for pulse oximetry screening to become part of the newborn check in order to improve detection rates and therefore improve survival rates.
• There are more than 35 different CHDs.
• CHDs are responsible for twice as many child deaths each year than cancer and are the biggest cause of death from a birth defect – 1 in 5 babies born with a CHD will not live to see their first birthday.
• Thanks to research and improvements in surgery, the death rate for CHD has declined by 30% in the last ten years.
• 12-15 babies with CHD are born each day in the UK
• CHDs cannot be cured and so children born with CHDs will require heart monitoring throughout their life and many will require multiple open-heart surgeries, some, like Jessica, within hours of birth.

Teething and talking

Jessica has been quite subdued though over the last couple of days and we think this is probably due to the second set of molars making their way through as she wants to chew on her clothes and toys and has been more unsettled at night than she usually is.  Two of the molars have already made their way through in the last couple of weeks so just two more to go and then Jessica should be done with teething for the foreseeable future (hopefully we’ll have  a few more weeks before Sophie starts the teething process though!)

Teething aside though, she has recovered well from her cardiac catheter and we have had a letter from Dr Archer to let us know that the team have discussed the results which are “very satisfactory” and have agreed that “continued observation is all that is required with a very good chance that we will not need to talk about further cardiac surgery during the course of 2014” – good news!  Our next planned hospital check-up is not until the beginning of April (with the paediatrician at Wexham Park) and hopefully we can stay out of hospital until then!

Jessica’s speech has really been coming along over the last few weeks and she is putting a lot more words together to make phrases (I particularly like Jessica telling me I’m her ‘favourite mummy!’) and is also doing a lot more signing (picking up new signs from Tiny Talk and Something Special).  She made us laugh at bedtime when Daddy mentioned Mr Tumble and was promptly told.  “No Tumble.  Sleep.  Silly Daddy!”  We tried to teach her to say “Auntie Twinny” and were confused when she kept repeating “Auntie Fizz” until we realised that she thought we were saying “Auntie Tweenies” (Fizz being her favourite Tweenies character!)  She also now says “Sophie” rather than “Sofa” (although Sophie is often just referred to as “baby”) and is very good at sharing her toys with her little sister (although Sophie isn’t always so keen at having things shoved in her direction!) and making her smile.