This week has probably been one of the crazier weeks we've had since we brought Isabelle home. On Tuesday we took Isabelle in for an EEG. That was no fun - we had to bring her in sleep deprived, so I had to keep her awake from about 6 AM until the test at 2, which doesn't sound hard, but for a 6 week old, is really hard. When we got there they rubbed this salty, gritty stuff on her head and put electrodes all over her head. There were about 20 taped onto her head and then they wrapped her entire head in gauze to keep them on. It was so sad to look at her with her head all wrapped and tons of wires coming out of her head. I held her while she slept for a half an hour and they recorded her brain activity and then they put a strobe light in front of her and recorded her brain activity. All in all, it took about 2 hours. We had been to her neurologist the week before and she has been doing well and so the neurologist expected that the EEG would be normal. She called me the next day and said that the EEG was still showing abnormal spikes in her frontal lobe and that Isaac and I needed to bring her in for an consultation immediately. We went in Friday and discussed her options. They are starting her on an anti-convulsant medication to stop seizures, although we're not sure she's been having them. They are really hard to identify in an infant - stiffening of the arms, eyes stuck in one spot, spontaneous laughing (yup, infants shouldn't start laughing before 2 months and giggling is a form of seizure in infants younger than that. When Ellie was a week old and in the hospital, Isaac and my Aunt Kate heard her laugh. I thought they were making it up, but the Doctor said that that was probably a seizure). The Doctor wants us to try and video record when we see her do any unusual behavior or anything we're not sure of, so she can evaluate it. In 3 months we are going to do another EEG on her and an MRI (they want to wait until she weighs more and is older) to see if we can figure out what is going on. They may possibly put her back into the hospital then too for 24 hour video monitoring, to see if they can record a seizure. So for now we don't really know too much, but we're going to keep her on the medication and in 3 months do more tests to see where we are at. At this point, she is getting different medications 11 times throughout the day. I have to keep them all written out and the times she gets them written out because I can't keep them all straight.

Good news is we had a good apt. with the cardiologist and she is gaining weight. She finally hit 8 pounds this week, which is great. It only took 7 weeks! She is great at home and next week we have fewer Doctor apts. than normal, so I am happy she can have a week with less poking and prodding than normal.

I'll keep updating the blog to let you know more as we know more.