Anna

       Anna was born March 24, 2011 6 days before her due date so she wasn't early and she wasn't late. She weighed 5lb 3 oz yes she was very small. She was born Via C section where the dr. discovered my uterus was extremely small. With my uterus being small and the lack of fluid I had, Anna was born with a few problems.
       We were initally told everything was fine and she was a healthy baby, but the night we took her home, she had a diaper explosion leading to a bath. After her bath, Anna's hands and feet turned blue. The conditions of our house were correct for a newborn, we even kept it a little bit warmer for her so this shouldn't have happened. We took her to the ER where she was admitted into the NICU for 72 hours. There they discovered her problems. Anna had a turbulence murmur which is a hole between the ventricles in her heart (this should eventually close). She was also diagnosed as having contractures of the arms and legs.         
       Contractures causes tightness not allowing her to extend her arms or legs to the fullest extent. Since she has been diagnosed she has been going to Physical therapy once a week, and her legs have been able to fully stretch out but her arms have not. I took her to the dr to get a paper for formula for WIC and they discovered she wasn't gaining weight properly ( another side effect of contracture). They have come to the conclusion that the contractures cause her to use a lot of energy and she needs more calories than the typical baby. So They gave us a referral to a GI specialist at Rhode Island Hospital with Hasbro Children's and we have an appointment on the 19th. They also gave us a referral to Orthopedics at Yale and a Neurologist at Hasbro. We went to the Orthopedic specialist and they said that if her arms don't work out in 3 months they will do xrays because she could have an elbow defect.
       We also went to the Neurologist and this was a big appointment (it took 2 hours) They discovered anna has no muscle in her upper arm and are afraid that if her arms don't loosen she could be at risk for fractures later and think that something in her brain is either not transmitting properly or her muscles just don't want to work the way her brain is telling them to. So they gave us a referral to a Genetic Dr at hasbro and we see them on Wednesday to get genetic testing done.
       We want to find out if there is a genetic disorder causing her size and also if there is a reason for my early delivery of abigail and my 2 miscarriages. On top of all that she also has to have a MRI of her brain done as well. This will be all under sedation so all the genetic testing and if GI wants to go a endoscopy it will all be done at the same time. I'll update on wednesday after our appointment with the genetics specialits.