Sunday, December 18, 2011

Brooks' Head

Remember when I left my wallet at the store and didn't discover it till I was checking in at the Children's Hospital? Yeah, me too.
I wanted to document that appointment because as we all know by now, my brain is no good. As I mentioned previously, Brooks head is a bit lopsided. I carry my babies deep and tight and sometimes their little noggins get a bit squished. The nurse noticed right away and told us he has "overlapping sutures".
His pediatrician has been monitoring his skull pretty closely. At two months she was convinced it would resolve itself rather quickly. At four months she wasn't so sure and told us that if there wasn't significant enough improvement at 6 months then she wold refer us.
She referred us to the Neurosurgery center at Children's Hospital. We met with Dr. Winston and Dr. French, and Neurosurgeon and Plastic surgeon.
They walked into the room, measured, palpated, and examined. "Well, the good news is, he doesn't need surgery." Dr. French said first, shortly confirmed by Dr. Winston.
In my mind I was a bit taken aback. I never actually thought he did, but that was clearly what they thought I was there for.
"Well, good!" I responded (not really sure what to say). "So, if he doesn't need surgery, does he need a helmet?" I asked. I was thinking I was pretty clever guiding them to the real reason I was there anyway.
"Bah! Helmet...NO!" Was essentially the response I was given. And that was that.
Both doctors were under the impression that helmets don't really do much; and that the end result is ultimately the same, you just save yourself a lot of money by not doing them.
"The only thing a helmet would do would be to get the skull to the proper point sooner," explained Dr. French.
"If that?!" scoffed Dr. Winston "Save yourself the money!"
I know there are differing opinions out there, but these two felt quite strongly. We are now doing our best to get Brooks to lay on his right side while sleeping, as that will possibly help round out his head a bit. For now, we wait.

2 comments:

Shawn AND Chelsey said...

oh no! i'll keep my fingers crossed for you! they told us the same thing about jax with a helmet but luckily we were able to keep him on his left side and it all popped into shape! phew! good luck! :)

Mika McDaniel said...

Melanie,
We went through this exact same thing with my daughter. We ended up buying the sleep positioners, and no our Dr did not tell us to but it did help, and made them a tad smaller, swaddled and then laid her on her right side to sleep at night. He may be too old now to get him to stay but it put my mind at ease. I agree with your Drs about the helmets. We worked really hard with El and now her head measures perfectly even. I know the helmet works for some people but, in my little own opinion, it is kinda the easy way out hoping it will fix everything and you won't have to do anything. The friends I have had that have done helmets have never seen much of a change during the helmet and the head really fixes itself over time. I am sorry you have to go through all of this. It is a stressful thing even though it's not a huge deal in the sceem of things. His head is going to be just fine! There is no way any of us have perfectly shaped heads. By the time his head grows to full size, no one will ever be able to tell and it will probably "measure", since they are way into that, perfectly! :)
Hope your family is doing well!
Have a very Merry Christmas!
<3