Saturday, February 25, 2017

Gemma's 1 Month Update

I can't believe how fast 4 weeks have gone by! So much has happened in this first month.


Gemma lost her umbilical cord stump at 7 days and had her first bath.
She smiles when she's awake but only when she wants to.
She has had awesome head control since she was born and pretty much holds it up on her own.
Her eyes are blue and getting lighter by the day.
She eats every 1-3 hours and I'm still breastfeeding. We made it to a month yay! It was rough to start and pretty painful. She has a shallow latch. But it doesn't really hurt anymore unless she cluster feeds and it really did get better right around 2-3 weeks like everyone says.
She's mostly a really great sleeper. We cosleep (because you gotta do what works when you have to be able to function the next day) and she mostly sleeps all night with about 3 feedings. Sometimes she has a bad night if she's gassy.
She really is a calm baby which I wasn't expecting at all since she was always moving and kicking me when I was pregnant.


Gemma was born with a very mild case of clubfoot on both feet. The doctor right after she was born said she only needed stretches and physical therapy. Then at her first week checkup on post, her doctor said it wasn't clubfoot just tight ligaments and recommended the same thing and referred us to a physical therapist. However, the physical therapists recommended we see a pediatric orthopedic specialist to get her feet casted, that they thought she'd need that and not just stretches or even splints.

So when she was 3 weeks old we quickly got a referral to the specialist and got her in to see him that same week. I was sort of thinking/hoping the specialist would say she didn't need casts, but that wasn't the case. He said it was clubfoot and that she needed casts right away (probably should have already been done) for at least 4 weeks and then special shoes/brace after that. So on Thursday she got her first cast which will be changed weekly.

Since we are moving so soon, there are added difficulties with finding a doctor stateside to immediately continue treatment. We can't finish before we leave and she can't have much of a gap between castings and what not. Fingers crossed/ prayers that it all goes smoothly. It's really stressful on top of everything else with moving but we know it's what's best for her so she hopefully doesn't have any delays in walking.

No comments:

Post a Comment