Olivia's 6 Month Wellbaby Visit

Today Olivia had several appointments at the Duluth Clinic, so Steve and I both took the day off to be there. As many of you know Olivia had a urinary tract infection about 6 weeks ago, and because of this her pediatrician recommended a few tests be done. She mentioned that UTI's are pretty uncommon in children under potty training age, so it would be good to make sure everything was ok with her bladder and kidneys.

The first appointment was for an ultrasound to make sure there wasn't already any damage or swelling of the kidneys. The second was called a VCUG procedure and it's to make sure there is no reflux back up into the kidneys and to make sure she was voiding urine properly. The ultrasound came back negative meaning her kidneys are in perfect shape. The results from the VCUG showed that there is reflux (VUR) on the left side of her urinary tract. The doctor said they grade the relux on a level of 1 - 4 (4 being the worst) and Olivia's is grade 3. They prescribed her a low grade antibiotic that she will need to take for 1 year to hopefully prevent any further infections. We will also be traveling to Minneapolis in a few weeks for her to see a Pediatric Urologist, so we are hoping to get more answers from him. Her pediatrician said that in 1 year they will re-evaluate by doing the VCUG again. She told us that 70% of children outgrow this on their own, while the other 30% need to have some type of corrective surgery (usually around age 3 or 4). In the mean time we just need to be more cautious and if Olivia get's a fever she will need to be seen right away.

The last appointment of the day was her 6 month Wellbaby visit. Even though she is almost 7 months we wanted to wait until Dr. Manney was back from maternity leave to see her. She went over all the results of her morning tests with us and made us feel much better about the results. They also did the routine checkup and sadly enough found that Olivia had an ear infection as well. We noticed she was really crabby last night and wouldn't sleep, but we just figured it was because of her cold. Luckily we saw the doctor today, so they put her on antibiotics for that as well.

Her stats were as follows:

• Height: 27" (80%)
• Weight 17 lb. 8 oz. (68%)
• Head: 17 1/8" (71%)

Compared to Jack at this age - they are exactly the same height, but Jack was just over 2 pounds heavier.

And of course we had to take a picture of her in her little hospital gown today.