Who's that cute kid in the helmet?

Carter has been wearing his cranial orthotic full time (23 hours a day) for the last week. He adjusted to it pretty easily (not surprising since he's such a good tempered kid). He doesn't mind it at all during the day. I think it's a little uncomfortable for him at night. He'll wake up once or twice a night and just needs to move around and get comfortable. It is making it more difficult to roll around and hold his head up. It's taking a little longer to adjust than I was hoping, but we're back in PT tomorrow, so we'll keep working on it.

For the most part, he's recovered from the surgery. He's off all meds and doesn't seem to be in any pain. We'll have a check up with the surgeon in a couple weeks, but all looks good at this point.

He must be feeling better because we had quite a growth spurt this week. He was hungry all the time and was taking good long naps. At 10 months old, he loves bananas, strawberries, bread, cheese, and whatever we're eating for dinner that I put in the grinder. He's still not a great eater, but he likes his finger foods. If only he would feed himself. He'll pick up all the food and play with it, but won't put it in his mouth. That's what we're working on in OT. Hopefully we'll have some of this stuff handled before he turns 1.

Surgery Update

Surgery was successful! Praise the Lord! Carter did great, surgeons did great and everything went as expected. They were even able to get us in right away for his MRI so we got to go home that afternoon. Carter is in a decent amount of pain. They gave us a perscription for Tylenol with codeine, but it tastes horrible. Man I hate giving kids medicine.

Surgery, Round 3

This week we head back to CHOC for another surgery for Carter. He has a couple minor issues we've been watching for a few months and it's time to fix him up. He has an undescended testicle and a hydrocele that they will be correcting. Surgery is scheduled for 7:30 and will be approximately 90 minutes. It's normally an outpatient procedure, but because of his other conditions, we'll have to stay the night so they can monitor him a little closer. While we're there, our neurosurgeon is ordering an MRI for a 6-month post-op look at how the shunt is working.

We appreciate your prayers for Carter (and us) during his surgery. Specific things you can pray for are:

• Please pray for our surgeon, Dr. MacAlear for her mental and physical sharpness.
• Please for strength and peace for us as parents during the procedure as well as the hours before while we try to keep Carter calm despite 12 hours of no food or drink.
• Please pray that the surgery will be smooth with no complications.

Good News, Bad News

We saw both Carter's neurosurgeon and cardiologist this week. The good news is, we had great check ups at both. His heart looks great and we don't need to go back for 6 months. Dr. Muhonen (neurosurgeon) said his shunt is working perfectly. However, the bad news is, Dr. M. recommends Carter wears a cranial orthotic (helmet) to reshape his head. Because of the extra time he had to spend on his back recovering from heart surgery and his delays in sitting and rolling, his head has gotten too flat in the back and he's worried it'll put too much pressure on the shunt. So on Thursday we went to get fitted for the orthotic. He'll have to wear it 23 hours a day for 4-6 months. And to top things off, we found out that insurance won't cover it because it's considered "cosmetic." Awesome. Exactly what I wanted to spend our tax return on.

So it was a little bit of a frustrating week. But I'll focus on the fact that the check-ups were positive. We'll take a helmet if it means no more brain surgery for a while.