This has ended up being a long post. Thank you for taking the time to read it.
I'm hoping please to hear from other parents who have experience PDA closure for their child who can reassure that life goes on after the procedure.
My nearly 7 month old has been diagnosed with a PDA after investigating a heart murmur.
Symptoms were noisy laboured breathing, sounding like he is congested all the time and slow weight gain (0.4th centile dropped from 9th at birth). (For context, born a month early due to IUGR due to pre eclampsia).
After going to A and E twice, seeing the HV several times and also a GP twice, a heart murmur was finally picked up and now we know that it is caused by a PDA.
Plan is diuretic medicine to clear extra fluid and Infantrini milk to try and speed up growth and then eventual keyhole surgery to close up the duct.
Drs have said once the duct is closed he should be fine and have no further complications- which we are hopeful about.
Out problem is that we are struggling to get him to drink the Infantrini milk as he is breastfed (history or trying to offer bottle top ups with varied success as he most often refuses- we have tried EVERYTHING to get him to take a bottle so not really looking for advice on this) and whilst we do put it in his food, we can't always guarantee he will eat it all so cane be sure how much he actually eats. I think we were expecting the Infantrini milk to be like Miracle Grow but alas we are still on the 0.4th centile with some slow but steady weight gain.
The point I'm trying to get to is this:
He he was on 25th centile at 20weeks scan and then born at 9th (due to IUGR) and now 0.4th (possibly as an affect of the PDA) bless him.
We would be interested to know if anyone else has seen rapid growth in their baby after the PDA procedure? Dad is 6' 4 and from a tall family (paternally) and I am 5'3- not tall I know but within an 'average height range' (my family are not tall but again, none are significantly below average) so we would expect our baby to be bigger than 0.4th centile even if they weren't massive!
I'd love to hear of any PDA babies that were previously 0.4th centile and are now more of an average height compared to parent height!
Or if I should prepare myself for another reason as to why he is so petite?!
If you got this far, thank you for reading!