NoahDavid's Journey

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14

My pregnancy with Noah was very normal until I got to my 2nd trimester when I started gaining a lot of weight.  I was tested for diabetes, but the tests came back normal.  The doctor kept a close eye on how many inches around I was, and I was continually measuring out at being farther along than I really was.  By the time the third trimester came around, I was sent to get a 3-D ultrasound because I had extra amniotic fluid.  The results were also normal.  We didn't think anything of it.

Noah had a normal birth.  We were at the hospital for 2 days and both got sent home.  Shortly after we got home, we noticed that he was breathing irregular and was "squeaking" when he was sleeping.

 We took him back to the hospital for his 4-day-old check-up to see the nurse.  She checked him over and asked us if he had been breathing irregularly at home.  We told her that he had, and he had also been making a strange sqeuaking noise.  While in the hospital that day they took him down to the ER and did chest X-rays to check his lungs.  The chest X-rays came back normal, and we went home. 

When he was 10 days old, we took him to the pediatrician for another check-up.  We found out that although his lungs were fine, he had a broken collar-bone.  The pediatrician also told us that he wanted to send him to an ENT pediatric specialist and scheduled the appointment. 

We went to the ENT appointment a few days later.  We had brought a tape-recording of the noises he made while sleeping.  The ENT doctor informed us that he had laryngomalacia, and that was why he had a stridor (the sqeuaking noise). We also commented that his left cheek was a little bit bigger than the right.  He told us to keep an eye on it, and try to make note of other things that didn't seem quite normal. 

When Noah was 3 weeks old, Noah went into the hospital for a scheduled laryngoscopy and bronchoscopy.  It was thought that Noah had a tiny cyst on his voice box.  When the scope was finished, we had "good news".  There was no cyst on his voice box.  What was thought to have been the cyst was actually just "bubbly" tissue.   His doctor explained that he had never seen anything like it before, that the tissue is usually smooth.  His epiglottis was also 3-4 times thicker than normal.   I have since talked to other families with children that have had the same "bubbly" tissue, also described as looking like fish eggs.  One of them had been told that it was lymphatic tissue.  Pictured below are the pictures they took during the scope.

 For the next months, Noah was seen at the ENT specialist monthly.  By the time he was 6 months old, the stridor had improved, but his cheeks had not.  His doctor continued to watch it to see if it grew.  By the time he was 9 months old, an MRI was scheduled so that they could find out what was going on. 

The results of the MRI was that Noah had cystic hygroma in his cheeks.  The doctor said that he was glad because he was afraid that his airway could have been involved, but the MRI showed that it was only in his cheeks.  We soon started noticing a few small red or white spots on the inside of his cheeks and were told that it was also the cystic hygroma.  They were very small spots and didn't seem to bother him, so we thought nothing of it.  Looking back at this picture now, we realize that he did have it in his tongue.  He had small red bumps present on the tip of his tongue above.  He also was a really smiley baby, but his tongue always seemed to stick out of his mouth most of the time. 

By the time Noah turned a year old, his ENT appointments were changed to every 6 months, unless he had any more problems.

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