Details of Surgery

I don't know if I ever did actually explain what the surgery actually was. When he was in the NICU after birth, they found a small bump on his head. It's about halfway between his forehead and where the end of your hairline would be at the start of your neck. I just thought his hair was more course there, but he also had a hair swirl, which the hair swirled around this red bump on his head. They did a CT Scan to see what it was. They described it as his brain tried to push through his skull before it had fused all the way and where the pressure was, was a group of blood cells that would have to be removed before he got too old because if he were to fall and bump it he could have internal bleeding between the skin and his skull. I actually spelled it wrong in the last post. It is called: encephalocele. I looked it up after I knew what it was and it talked about a lot of babies actually die from it, and it made me a little nervous. It kind of depended on where it was located on their head and stuff too, but still, any surgery is scary, especially with an infant. The neurosurgeon was excellent! I absolutely loved her. He had the surgery at Riley hospital for Children. Those of you who live out of the state of Indiana I'm not sure if you would have ever heard about it, but it is a great pediatric hospital. There are some VERY sick kids there. Noah had a roommate and he was really sick. He had surgery the same day Noah did but he had all kinds of other issues that I heard the mother talking to the nurse about. Just seeing some of the kids there is sad, but they are getting the best care they can possibly get.

So, all in all, she had to repair the encephalocele and then found the dermatitis sinus whatever that was too and took all of that out and then stitched him up. I took the dressing off of his head today. She showed us about how big the incision was, but I didn't realize it was going to be that big I guess. It's about 4 inches long and goes vertical along the center of his head. The stitches you actually can't see as well as I thought you would be able to. It looks good though. The middle is kind of red, but it's really not swollen or infected looking, so that's good. I think him being in the hospital is actually going to get him to sleep in his crib for us though! He didn't really have any pain medicine yesterday. I did give him some before bed time because I wanted to make sure he slept well. He woke up around 7:30 and I gave him his pacifier and turned on his toy in his crib and he went back to sleep for about an hour and woke up talking. He fell asleep on my bed around 11. He was getting really cranky. I gave him some more pain medicine and moved him to his crib and he's asleep again. I will probably have to wake him up to get him ready to go to get Leon around 2. He'll get in a good nap, but will probably sleep through everything. It won't hurt him to sleep though. He's on tylenol with codeine and they gave me some Miralax if he needs it for constipation. So far, he hasn't had a problem with that!