Pipsqueak and his Two week photo shoot

First of all, for those who have been waiting for the prognosis, we did get to Dr. Dickson today, and he said Daniel is just fine.  He never even heard Daniel squeak (he was either sleeping or screaming), but he did a physical check on the nose and voice box -- which I guess is why we went to him in the first place, so that's good enough.  He said everything looks just fine, except that there's a bit of extra cartilage (see bottom right of accompanying illustration) around the trachea, that must be flopping in a bit when Daniel breathes.  The only cure is for Daniel to grow into it, which normally happens by 18 months.  So everyone around us, or listening to the meetings, will have a good opportunity to practice not getting annoyed by unusual noise, aren't we too kind! :-)

Well, Daniel turned two weeks old this Tuesday, so I did another photo shoot with him.  Pulled some undyed silks out of my fabric bucket, strung them across the yard (fancy schmancy, eh?!) ...

 and started snapping some pictures.

 He was sound asleep the whole time.

Then, today, I got a little excessively carried away playing with all of Picasa's cool editing features.

Maybe ironing the silk first would've been a good idea?!

Later that evening I decided to do a few more picture while he was awake.  The lighting wasn't the greatest, but some of the tweaked versions turned out really fun, in my humble opinion.

"Golden Boy"

And that's all for now, folks!

Update on Pipsqueak

Our Daniel has already obtained many nicknames, like Sparrow, Squeaker, Whistler and Pipsqueak.  He has been likened to a baby bird, a guinea pig, a spinning hamster wheel. For those of you who haven't had the privilege of meeting him in person yet, here's some insight:

This video was taken on the 12th, 10 days old.

This noise was not present in the hospital, but showed up on Friday, I think.  By Lord's Day it was definitely there, and I got great amusement from watching people trying to figure out where that noise was coming from as meeting started!

On Tuesday (one week old) we went to Dr. Ng (a 'consulting pediatrician' we had seen in the hospital), where she was pleased to tell us that his heart murmur was considerably improved, and she expected it to be entirely gone by one month old.  She commented that is was very hard to hear his heart over the sound of his squeaks!  Since Daniel's lungs are clear, she referred us to Dr. Dickson, an ear-nose-throat specialist.  (Our appointment with him is tomorrow.)


The next day, Wednesday, we went to Dr. Pushie for his one-week checkup.  Her only comments on the matter were that it's a good thing it's not cold season, or it might be a cause for more immediate concern; and she was glad I had already been to referred to a specialist; and really, I Really need to go to all follow-up visits with him ... (unlike what I do with prenatal visits to her!)


On a funny side note, when Daniel was weighed at Dr. Ng's office he weighed 9lbs 9oz, but at Dr. Pushie's office the next day he weighed almost 10lbs.  Why the huge difference? I wondered -- and then I realized that he was starving hungry at Dr. Ng's, so that I literally started feeding him as soon I took him off the scales, whereas the next day I nursed him while I was sitting in Dr. Pushie's waiting room.  A full tummy makes a big difference!  


Either way, though, he gained back his birth weight very fast, and is obviously healthy, which makes it easier for me not to worry about his squeak.  The fact that he never squeaks while sleeping is reassuring, too.


Oh, I've also heard that if you want to hear more of his squeaking, just tune in to our meetings some time when he's awake ... it comes through loud and clear :-)