The CMV scare

When Lucas was almost 7 weeks old I took him to the doctor because he had been VERY fussy at night. Noah had done the same thing at that age, and had an ear infection, so I wanted to take Lucas in to get checked. Especially considering all the stuff that had been put in his ears recently.

Dr. Morneault (Dr. Miller only works Monday and Tuesday as he's partially retired, she sees his patients the rest of the week) checked his ears and said they looked great. I noticed her looking closely at his eyes, which were still a little bit yellow. He had been a little bit yellow up to that point, but it had faded quite a bit. I had read a bit on it, and figured he just had "breast feeding jaundice" which can last up to three months since no one was worried about it before then.

She said she wanted to test his jaundice levels just in case, since he was 7 weeks old, and make sure there was nothing else going on. That was fine with me, I'm all about being proactive. We went into the lab and the poor guy got his first heel prick. He did very well for it. The results came back higher then she would like, and she said it was most likely just breastfeeding jaundice, but she wanted me to take him back to the lab to get some more blood drawn so they could check his thyroid and for blood diseases. Little guy was a trooper again, and didn't even cry as they took four small tubes of blood.

We went home and I (stupidly) started to google "jaundice and hearing loss" and one of the first hits that came up was a link to "CMV" or Cytomeglavirus. I saw that it was in the herpes family (which was the first thing that freaked me out- I get cold sores ALL the time- which is cause by Herpes Simplex 1) and that it was a mostly silent infection. The research said that if a pregnant woman gets it for the first time in pregnancy it can have various side effects ranging from SEVERE (death to infant) to non-symptomatic. It said it was a leading cause of congenital hearing loss in infants. It also said that most infants that presented with symptoms of CMV at birth were likely to have vision problems and some mental retardation.

Hearing Lucas may be deaf, made me sad, and I shed a few tears, but this TERRIFIED me. The idea that he may not have his hearing, or his vision AND have some sort of mental disability was way more then I was expecting. All of a sudden I felt silly for saying "it could be worse", because we were faced with the possibility that it WAS worse. I called Norman (who was out of town in CA performing) and told him my fears. At that point the doctors hadn't said anything about it, but I was planning on asking them to test for CMV when I talked to them after the weekend.

I didn't end up needing to call them, as Dr. Miller called me on monday. He saw the original test results for his jaundice and said that because of that, and his hearing loss he wanted to test Lucas for CMV. This made me happy on one hand, but at the same time, more concerned to know that my fears that it was a possibility were valid. I went to the office that day and picked up a pee bag for Lucas to wear so that I could collect his urine the next day to bring in to the lab for testing.

I went in and they took the urine bag (poor guy it was stuck around his privates, but he didn't even cry when I removed it!) and then did a toe stick and took some more blood.

It was a long day that day, and I think the reality of testing for CMV and the stress of dealing with all this and everyday life alone (as Norman was still on the road) caught up with me. I put Lucas down on the playmat while I made Noah dinner and he was fussy. I looked over at him and noticed he was moving his head back and forth a lot and kind of jerkily. Since I was hyper aware of everything he was doing, I started researching jerky head movements in babies. My hope was to reassure myself it was normal, instead I freaked myself out SO bad. I ended up reading about some REALLY awful things, and convincing myself that Lucas was displaying sytoms of it. Of course, I had nursed him to sleep by then, so I magnified in my mind his symptoms. I was up until 4am that day having a royal meltdown and just praying that my baby would be ok and not end up with any horrible debilitating disabilities. I never thought it would be something I hoped for, but I was praying for JUST hearing loss at that point.

Thankfully, I then found a link to a post on a bulletin board talking about how all the women's babies on that board moved their heads like that all the time. (And really, I remember Noah doing it too- but I was not reasonable that night). When he woke up for his feeding at 3:30 that morning I completely unswaddled him and watched him startle like a normal baby, and felt better.

I was a wreck the next day, and decided that I couldn't do that to myself and the boys again. I have now COMPLETELY sworn off Dr. Google, if he was a real doctor he would have been sued for malpractice many many times by now!

I waited for the tests results to came back and just prayed he didn't have CMV. I didn't hear anything that week, and was going with the notion that no news was good news. I take Noah to gymnastics on tuesday morning and had a call come in while I was there that looked like a number from the doctor's office. I couldn't answer it then, but I heard the my voicemail alert. I got butterflies in my stomach, and once I got a chance went and checked it.

I heard it was Dr. Miller and my stomach dropped. Thankfully he said the words I had praying I would hear "The tests results came back, and everything looks good". He said that there was no trace of CMV in the urine test and that only my antibodies to CMV were found in the blood. He talked to the infectious disease doctor and she said the numbers were so small, it would not indicate an active CMV infection in pregnancy. To say I was relieved was an understatement!! It had been a very stressful couple of weeks, and I was so happy to have it end with positive news. It really made me realize even more that Lucas having hearing loss was really no big deal in the grand scheme of things!