This is a song about Alex

I know that I do a lot of talking about Jacob on here and less so about Alex. It happens mostly because Jacob can talk and Alex can't...the things that Alex does are harder to describe. But Alex is growing so fast and is starting to be mobile. Not crawling yet, but close - he backs up like a pro! He had a doctor's appointment last week and he is up to the 90th percentile for height and the 60th for weight (at almost 22 lbs).  He's well over the 95th percentile for head size, which is something that has always concerned his doctor. I wasn't really worried because, frankly, he comes from a long line of men with big heads - and I mean that literally, not figuratively.

But between his head size and the fact that he's on the slower end of his development, his doctor wanted him to have an ultrasound of his head. An ultrasound can only be done on babies - before the skull closes completely so we couldn't wait any longer. So last Tuesday (the 12th) I took him over to the hospital and held a very angry Alex still while they did the ultrasound of his head. He did NOT like having to stay still or having pressure or goo on his head, but he got over it pretty quickly. Still, holding angry babies still is not something I enjoy all that much and I was glad to be done. I figured that I would get an email the next day confirming that, like most cases of babies with really big heads, it was just genetic.

I was wrong.

What I got instead was a call from his doctor a couple hours later. The ultrasound showed some anomalies. It could be nothing but she didn't want to say anything until he had an MRI. Now, MRIs are not that fun for anyone, but they are not invasive and (since I've had one) I can say that they are not a huge deal. Unless you are in infant. In that case you need to go under general anesthesia. I have had some scary things happen in my life, but "There is something wrong with your child's brain and we don't know what" ranks pretty high on the list. Luckily, we were able to get the MRI scheduled quickly and so on Thursday morning we were back at the hospital.

As anyone whose had general anesthesia can tell you, you have to fast before hand. I had a list of instructions: no solid food after 1:45 am, no formula after 3:45 am, and no clear liquids after 5:45 am. Since none of us were up at any of those times, he didn't eat anything after 8:30 pm. He was in an amazingly good mood for someone who hadn't eaten and didn't know why. Such a good mood in fact that the nurses who were getting him ready were concerned. But he's Alex - he's usually in a good mood and he has a smile that lights up his whole body. I had been told that if he didn't have any metal on his clothes he wouldn't need to be changed to a hospital gown. Most baby clothes have metal snaps, but he happens to have a couple polo shirts with plastic buttons so we were good to go. He got an IV, which was not fun, but as soon as they gave him the medicine he got wobbly and closed his eyes. The anesthesiologist had told us that as soon as that happened she would take him and run so he would be under for as short a time as possible. They told us it would take 45 minutes to an hour. We waited in the waiting room and they came out to get us about 40 minutes later. All went well...he was still asleep but we could go back and sit with him. It took a few minutes to wake him up - and when he did he acted like he was drunk - but soon they took out his IV and we were good to go.

The next morning I got a call from the doctor: no hydrocephaly (which is what she'd been worried about) and no brain tumors - very good news. But there was some indication that he had had some prior brain damage - and injury or an infection of some kind. It was old damage (how old can it really be when you are 8 months old?) and probably not important. It could have happened in utero and we would never have known it was there if we hadn't run these tests. I still don't know if that's a good thing or not. But she had passed the results on to a neurologist who could give us the final word on the next steps.

I finally got the word yesterday: there are no next steps! What the radiologist thought was evidence of previous damage is actually fairly common development of babies with larger than average heads. It is not clinically significant and there is nothing to be concerned about. It was a lot of energy to prove what I already knew, but it is good to know that everything is okay.

In the meantime, he is completely out of his baby carrier car seat and has outgrown his swing. We have passed some of these things on to friends. It is very strange! We were going to use Jacob's old car seat, but we found a narrower one and got one for each boy. It's definitely tight, but we can fit another person in the backseat of our car, which is nice. The seats also fold and have carry straps which should make traveling a lot easier - and there will be lots of travel next year. He's almost out of his 9 month clothes and has taken eating lessons from his brother. We are so blessed to have our boys! If I could ask one favor of everyone out there - please say a little prayer for all of those families who go through all of the stress we went through last week, but without the positive outcome at the end. For us it was only a week, but for many many families it is a lot longer. Thank you!