First doctor appointment...

Shew. Gotta start somewhere, right?!

I took our favorite little buddy with me for extra hands.

 He was a dream, but his hands were busy taking 38 pictures of Dr.K (I counted.)  and 12 that all look like this:

He got a few others too :)

Basically, she's healthy.

18 lb 14 oz (not as much as we thought!) and 29" long.
That puts her in the 15th percentile on the typical chart but 90th percentile on the DS chart!


He gave us something to clear up her eyes and something for the reflux (we barely discussed it, but since she puked all over his room, he caught on pretty quickly). We are going to keep her on the Similac Sensitive for now- with a thickener- and then transition her to stage 2 formulas when her stomach stabilizes and she is able to get some vitamins and nutrients from more table foods.

The stressful part always comes in having ZERO medical history. The only thing we have is a shot record in cyrillic and we don't know for sure how accurate it is (The same doctor that told me she was walking and talking and eating vegetables, told me she was up-to-date on her vaccinations. She may be, we just don't know).

We were also given conflicting information about her heart. The orphanage doctor said no concern, her records say cardio myopathy (which could be anything, really). So... we are going to the cardiologist and an echo has been ordered so we can be sure.

We also have a referral for Tennessee Early Intervention Services (TEIS) and the Down Syndrome Clinic at Vanderbilt. The two combined will eventually provide the other services she needs: physical therapy, occupational therapy, and feeding/speech therapy as of right now.

Because she is so big (and a few other reasons), Dr.K felt we needed to check her for Hypothyroidism (common in people with DS).  He is also checking her blood count since leukemia is also prevelent in children with DS. Add those into the other lab work we needed to have a better picture of her health and previous treatment PLUS vaccinations that she most likely did not get in Ukraine PLUS what would normally be given at 12 mos. Poor baby was poked all over the place :(

Even worse, her tiny little veins and big chubby arms made it VERY difficult to draw blood. Over 20 minutes of digging with a needle in both arms. Even the nurses were getting upset having to torture this poor baby. It was just awful!

But they finally got out just enough to run the tests. Hopefully, we start getting all the phone calls necessary soon and get the ball rolling to make her the very best Anna Gray she can be :)