Update P7: 6 months later - trust your parental instincts and to hug your children.

Father's day update on Page 7. Feeling very introspective and wanted to share.

Tl;dr at the end...

My wife gave birth to our second child at the end of October, a precious baby girl. I mentioned in another thread that she had a short stay in the NICU after birth due to some breathing/feeding issues. This didn't seem like anything completely abnormal as she was a few weeks early. Anyway, she is released after four days and everything goes relativy smooth for the next month.

Fast forward to the beginning of December, she has gotten back to her feeding troubles. It starts off with just extreme sleepiness and refusal to eat. We take her to the pediatrician to see if everything is alright. Her weight is on the very low end of normal, but still within range so they aren't overly concerned. We take her home.

Over the next couple days, she continues with this but adds some very noisy and labored breathing. We take her back to her pediatrician. He sees her again and watches the videos we took of her breathing and diagnoses her with laryngomalacia. A common condition where the cartilage in the voice box is floppy. Apparently a common thing in premature babies. We take her home again.

Two-three more days at home... She adds some very deep chest contractions while breathing. So disturbing that we about called 911 when she had a small bout of it. We have an owlet sensor on her foot though and her O2 sat never dropped below 98%, so we figured we didn't need an emergency room.

So we go back to the pediatrician and see a different dr this time. She says reflux and orders a swallow study as another thing my daughter had been doing was forcefully vomiting entire feeds. We pick up her reflux meds and wait for the swallow study.

Things are ok for a few days on the reflux meds until this past Monday. She threw up Monday night, all day Tuesday morning and evening. The breathing was intensely labored and wheezing. She was holding no food down, so we took her to the emergency room Tuesday night.

She threw up on the dr in triage and he said, "yes this is concerning". They admitted her to the PACU that night. Keep in mind that due to covid, only 1 parent is allowed in there and I am siting in the parking garage this whole time...

The next day is full of tests. They bump up her swallow study and find what looks like tonsils. This apparently does not happen in infants, so they decide to knock her out and scope her throat. A team of specialists (ent, pulmonologist, gi, speech pathologist) all go in to look at it. Turns out it is a dermoid cyst stemming from the back of her sinus that is resting on top of her airway.

She is intubated and scheduled for surgery the next day.

I don't know if any of you have ever had to see your child hooked up to all the machines, but it is absolutely the worst site you can imagine. This girl is only 7 weeks old.



Anyway, the surgery was yesterday and only took about 15 minutes. After scaring us to death about all the possible outcomes, she is in better condition than any of them expected. They immediately took out the breathing and ng tubes. She was able to start bottle feedings last night and she held it all down. Her check contracts normally and she is no longer wheezing. If everything stays the same, she should be able to come home today or tomorrow.

All this is to say, you know your children better than the doctors do. If something doesn't seem right, keep at it. All we have heard once they discovered the cyst was that this could have easily killed her at any moment. Life is short and time is precious. Keep that in mind this holiday season and spend time with your kids and family.

Tldr: pediatrician missed an extremely rare thing that could have killed my newborn daughter. Mom's instinct brought her to the ER where it was caught and corrected. Turn off the TV and play with your kids.