Therapy Begins

Emmett had such a good day yesterday compared to the last several days! He was finally napping during the day, which made all the difference in his feeding abilities and overall irritability. Although he's not sleeping long stretches at night, he showed some improvement in his sleeping abilities last night as well. Normally after his 3:30am feed, he won't go back to sleep in his bassinet because he begins cluster feeding again, but this morning he took his entire bottle and went back to sleep for an hour!🙌🏻

Our morning continued with an unexpected visit to the Pediatrician's office. As I mentioned in an earlier post, one of the symptoms that led me to Emmett's diagnosis was "milk tongue". Well this morning I was thinking about all the other symptoms that babies with oral ties experience, which Emmett thankfully didn't have, and thrush was one of the first to pop in my mind.

Thrush is a fungal infection that presents as white pearls or plaques on the tongue. Because infants with tongue ties take much longer to feed due to their speech difficulties, formula or breastmilk stays in contact with an infants tongue for a prolonged period of time causing thrush to develop.

I began to wonder how you can tell the difference between milk tongue and thrush, since both present with a white substance on the tongue. You know it, I was back on Google trying to find out more information.

I read that with milk tongue, you should be able to stick your finger in the infant's mouth and wipe the white residue off of the tongue, whereas with thrush the white residue would stay.

Of course my next mode of action was to stick my finger in Emmett's mouth and try to wipe the white residue clean. Well, it didn't work, so I made a phone call the the Pediatrician to get him checked out. Sure enough, they too, felt that the white substance on Emmett's tongue was indeed thrush, so they prescribed him a medication called Nystatin, which we will have to apply to his tongue for the next seven days.

Ever since I figured out what was going on with Emmett, I had been thinking about how I would approach telling the Pediatrician about discovering his condition. I know that no provider is perfect and often things go missed, but I couldn't help but feel a little frustrated that something so obvious was overlooked after multiple head to toe assessments and many concerns expressed. Especially since it caused my baby to suffer for much longer than he should have.

The Nurse Practitioner we met with was very compassionate about everything we are going through and listened to our concerns. I shared a very brief update about what has been going on with Emmett since we were last in office for his one month appointment and explained our plan of action moving forward. She ensured us that we are doing everything they would recommend us to do and that she hoped once the procedure was done, Emmett would feel much better.

I did mention that the GI specialist felt that Emmett wasn't gaining as much weight as he should be due to having tall parents. Between Emmett's one month appointment and the GI appointment, he gained exactly one ounce per day. He previously was gaining more than an ounce a day, so of course I began to worry that Emmett was burning too many calories with how hard he was working to eat and his lack of sleep. I requested for him to be weighed at his appointment today and he weighed in at 10 pounds 1.5 ounces. This was an incredible jump from 9 pounds 7 ounces over the course of just five days!

I definitely felt relieved to know that his weight is not being negatively impacted by his oral ties, since this is definitely something I've been worrying about lately. I'm not sure if the Nurse Practitioner realized that their staff was one of the reasons why Emmett's diagnosis was missed, but she seemed to feel really bad about us having to figure all of this out on our own. The important thing is that they now know what is going on with Emmett, so that all of his providers can provide a interdisciplinary approach to Emmett's recovery process. Before this appointment, we technically still had not had a provider offically confirm my diagnosis for Emmett, so it felt good to get that confirmation during his appointment today.

We also had our first appointment with the chiropractor today. The appointment was only an evaluation, so unfortunately, Emmett didn't get any treatment to help relieve some of his tension. However, the evaluation is still a very pertinent piece to Emmett's bodywork therapy. The evaluation consisted of meeting with the chiropractor to discuss our prenatal, perinatal, and postpartum journey so far, as well as performing a handful of tests to help collect more data on Emmett's specific needs for treatment.

After sharing with her that I experienced a high amount of stress in my third trimester, between work and my dyshidrotic eczema diagnosis, I learned that maternal stress can have a strong correlation with an infant's struggles after birth. I was actually thinking the other day about whether or not these third trimester stressors could have contributed to the tension that Emmett is experiencing right now, so it was interesting that she that felt this information was helpful for Emmett's plan of care.

The first test that she performed was a test that measured heart rate variability. A probe, similar to a pulse oximeter, was placed on Emmett's earlobe. The probe created a pattern on the screen that was in sync with Emmett's heart rate. The probe collected data for about three minutes. She explained that factors, such as heart murmurs, could interrupt the reading, so three minutes ensured they were able to collect enough accurate data.

The second test that was performed was a test that used a device to measure the temperature throughout different parts of Emmett's body. The chiropractor explained that temperature correlates with neurological activity inside the body, giving them more insight on where Emmett specifically holds his tension.

The third test that she performed was a few different stretches to assess how much resistance Emmett's body responded with when being held in different positions. The stretch that was the most shocking was when she curled Emmett's side into a c-shaped position, attempting to see how close his feet could get to his head. She explained that this stretch helps assess the tension in the diaphragm. Apparently, an infants feet should be able to get pretty close to the top of their head, but Emmett's feet barely made it past the middle of his body. This definitely showed that he is not only experiencing tension, but a lot of it.

We won't get any results back from the evaluation until our next appointment on Wednesday, but Brett and I are eager to talk to the chiropractor about the data they collected on Emmett. They will use this data to create a plan of care for him, including what type of adjustments would be most beneficial to Emmett's recovery and how frequently they recommend him coming in to get adjusted. His first adjustment will also take place on Wednesday, so we are hoping he will start to feel some relief soon!