Our 4bush Adventures: Mia is 7 months!

Photo Credit: Jhonattan Villalobos

Is this year flying by or what?! My baby girl is 7 months!! She's a warrior.

I want to title this month, "The Fight of the Infections". She had an ear infection in both ears and she had a Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) called, pseudomonas aeruginosa. It's a pretty bad UTI and we had to start straight cathing her 4 times a day, instead of 2 because she wasn't peeing on her own anymore. Thankfully she started peeing on her own and we're down to just 3 times a day. This type of UTI is not very common in regular babies, but it's pretty common in Spina Bifida babies because they have to be cathed daily and that introduces bacteria (no matter how clean or sterile you do it).

After she got over that, the swelling alongside the shunt started going down and we were able to breathe for like, two days. She then started throwing up at least once a day. When I felt along the shunt, I felt a really hard ball right behind her ear next to the shunt. It almost fell like a bone growth. I called neurosurgery and they got me in to clinic the next day. When they saw her, they told me she had two lymph nodes that were swollen.

Yes. I totally made a cartoon of what's going on inside of Mia

Basically, the lymph nodes next to the shunt became swollen because they are fighting off an infection. Since she was better from the UTI and from the infection in her ears I asked the Neurosurgeon, what infection are the lymph nodes fighting? He said that they weren't sure, but that they were pretty certain it was the shunt.

A shunt infection is probably the worst thing that could happen to her because it could cause some permanent brain damage and we won't know exactly what part of the brain it affected until she's older.

Her body however, is trying so hard to fight the infection, so she hasn't gotten super sick yet. We're still on surgery watch with Mia. If her body is able to fight off the infection, great! If not, she'll be in the hospital for a couple of weeks and they'll go in, take out the shunt, then have the fluid drain outside of her body until the infection clears. Then, they'll go back in and put the shunt in.

When I asked if we could check to see for sure if she has a shunt infection, they told me that they couldn't do that. They can and there is a way to know, but it's too risky and it can introduce infection and make things worse. So, we'll just let her fight it off on her own.

So while we wait for the infection to take its course, we celebrate other things:

Mia now JUMPS!! I am so proud of her! She loves bouncing up and down and loves doing it to the rhythm of music. This is great because it means her legs are getting stronger. She's working hard on her lower body strength and doing amazing!

She can sit without help for about 10 seconds! She either falls over to the side or she folds in like a sandwich (hahaha). But, she's using her hands for support so much more and her glutes are getting stronger!

We have come so far mobility wise. I can't believe how much she can do! She is kicking hydrocephalus' butt! Telling it who's boss!

She grabs her feet! She was first doing it only with her left hand, but now her right hand realized there's also a right foot she can grab! So, she's opening up her right hand more than before and grabbing her feet!