DJ and the children's hospital

Know what the best way to freak out a new mom is? Have her show up for her baby's 1 month appointment, take a look at his head, and tell her she has to head to the children's hospital for x-rays. Then, call her back and tell her that based on those x-rays, you're ordering a CT scan and an appointment with a neurosurgeon. Yup, this is gonna be a good story. Buckle up!

When DJ was born, he (like a lot of babies) developed a cephalohematoma. That's a fancy word for a bruise on his head from the process of being born - turns out it's rough to get into the world. The thing is that most babies' head bruises (that look like a nice goose egg, by the way) go away on their own. In fact, only 1% of babies with cephalohematomas don't see them go away. Guess which percentage DJ is in? Oh yeah!

This pic has a great view of his rather large head lump - poor kid!

Yesterday was the big day - we had to be at the children's hospital at 6:30 in the morning. I was worried about it because, well, they told me I couldn't feed him breastmilk after 2:30 in the morning, with Pedialyte being okay until 4:30. Why couldn't I feed my poor child? Well, because he's not old enough to hold himself still and was probably going to need to be sedated. Yeah, as if this whole thing wasn't already making me a basket case. Sigh! So we get to the hospital hoping to avoid sedation (the CT scan was supposed to take about 3 minutes), and guess who was wide awake and content to stare at everything, meaning LOTS of head movement? Do you know what's really sad? Watching your child being sedated. They gave him two drugs through his nose to knock him out and told us to hold him but not to bounce or soothe him as he gave in to the drugs and passed out. Yeah, tell an already freaking out mom that she can't comfort her crying baby - that's going to really help! Luckily, it only took him a minute or two to pass out, and Deg was holding him (I was pumping, which probably turned out to be a good thing because I'm enough of a basket case without having to hold my child and not comfort him while he's squealing because something was squirted up his nose and now his body's doing weird things, like going to sleep when he doesn't want it to). 

He was very, very sleepy once those meds kicked in.

DJ was then hooked to a heart and blood pressure monitor and wheeled down the hall to get his CT scan. They let us stay in there while they set it up, but we had to wait in the hall while they did the scan. Granted, it took all of 3 minutes, but that's when I got teary eyed. I'd been holding it together pretty well until then, but the closed door between me and my baby, who I saw knocked out and strapped to a huge machine was the proverbial straw for my tear ducts. Anyway, soon enough, out came DJ with his nurse and we went back to our room in the sedation unit. They told us it'd take him about an hour to wake up (especially since, at this point, he had to be really hungry) and that as soon as they saw his eyes, we could go. So of course, that didn't go anything like they had planned. That kid was knocked OUT. We tried to was him up, his nurse tried, and a few other nurses came in to try, too (apparently they didn't believe DJ's nurse when she said he wouldn't wake up). Now before you think he was in danger, his oxygen levels, heart rate, and blood pressure were fine. We could get him to squirm a little and even fuss a bit, but he was definitely still asleep and his eyeballs where nowhere in sight. 4 hours later, the anesthesiologist told us and our nurse that if DJ could eat and show he could latch on and swallow without a problem, that'd be enough to send us home. So, by the grace of God, I persuaded my very sleepy baby to eat for maybe 5 minutes, during which time he swallowed just fine, and we were dispatched. 

DJ being wheeled down the hall by his nurse. She was such a nice lady - we were lucky to have great care at the children's hospital.

Look at how tiny that very unconscious baby is in that child-sized CT machine!

Front view of DJ in the machine.

Back view of DJ in the machine.

And here we are several hours later, still passed out at the children's hospital. Poor little dude!

So then, we headed over to the neurosurgeon's office, which was 2 blocks away, so we put our unconscious little dude in the stroller and tried to enjoy the nice day outside. We got there and got checked in with no problems, and when the doctor came in, he was so nice. He pulled up DJ's CT scan (by the way, seeing a 3D model of your kid's skull and brain is creepy and awesome) and showed us the bump. ((And lucky for you, we got a copy of the images, so I'll show you the inside of my kid's head. How many mommy bloggers can do that?) Anyway... here's what the doctor said: the top of the bruise has calcified, but the inside is still that gooey bruise material. However, the calcified part isn't crossing any of the sutures between the bones in his head and the bump is all on the surface, meaning it's not affecting his brain cavity at all, so long story short, it's not an emergency concern. Because bone is a living tissue, it's always changing, and so there's a chance that this growth will go away on its own in time. The doctor said that when he's 9 months to a year old, if it still hasn't gone away and we don't like the way it looks, we can choose to go in and have it operated on, but that it'd be an aesthetic issue, not  a developmental one. So basically, if it's still noticeable in 9 or so months, we decide if it's making his head lopsided enough that we want to get it removed so he doesn't get teased by other kids and doesn't feel self conscious about having a lopsided head. Needless to say, we were relieved to hear that all was well with our little nugget. And based on all these crazy tests, we know our little dude is healthy and growing and developing just fine.

This is our kid's brain.

Check out that bump - see the shell and the gooey inside? Gross AND neat!

This is a creepy 3D model of DJ's skull. You can see from this shot that the bump really has become part of the skull.

So we packed up and went home. We didn't get back until 3 in the afternoon, and guess who was still very passed out? In his sleepy state, I convinced him to eat a little bit more (keep in mind, this is the second time he's halfheartedly eaten for a few minutes for like 12 hours) and then he and I took a nap. At around 5, he started to stir and for the first time, I saw his eyeballs. Good thing they didn't make us wait! He spent the rest of the evening awake but pretty still for him (after all, we had drugged him) and was asleep for the night around 12:30. He had a really normal night, and woke up this morning with a big smile on his face (which is his normal morning routine and is freaking awesome, by the way) and has been his normal self today so far.

See? All better!

So that is the story of DJ's traumatic day yesterday. I wanted to blog about it because several family members wanted the details and pics, and because I want to be able to go back and read this in the future. When he's 7 or 8, he's gonna think this is the best story ever!