Some kids have all the luck...

...and Ezra is not one of them! This last week we had three appointments, first his pre-op followed immediately by one with the dental team for a cleaning of the latham.

Dr. Siva (Dr. Australia) & Dr. Shusterman
Post cleaning which explains the "smile"

Then the following day with the plastic surgeon to get one last look. While we were there the nurse mentioned that they were going to have Dr. Meara look at his head because they had noticed some flattening (I'm guessing at the pre-op appointment). He came in and looked at his head for all of like three seconds and told me that Ezra would need a helmet because he had "pretty severe" plagiocephaly (from sleeping with his head turned to one side...common since the "back to sleep" campaign), but that it was up to us because it really is just an aesthetic thing (his brain is fine regardless of his head shape).

Rhombus

AHHH! I was freaking out, my son is finally going to look normal and you want him to wear a huge helmet 23 hours a day for the next three months!!! I had already been talking to his pediatrician for the last two months about it and she said that it would be much less noticeable by the time he was a year and that we didn't need to worry about it. (On a side note one good thing did come of the appointment...they said that he won't need to wear the arm splints that would keep him from touching his face!) So they wrote me out a prescription and told me to stop by the NAPCO office and see if our insurance would cover it because it costs "in the thousands". NAPCO informed me that Aetna usually doesn't cover it because they consider it to be cosmetic, but that MassHealth (our secondary) usually does. I made an appointment for the next day (third trip to Children's in 3 days) to get measurements taken of his head for them to send to MassHealth so that they could decide if it was medically necessary. I came home on the verge of tears (how much does Ezra need to go through?) and wrote an email to his pediatrician and started researching plagiocephaly. I had calmed down by that night and his pediatrician called me when she got the email (she is an amazing doctor). We talked it over and came to the conclusion that we did not need to do the whole helmet thing. We are going with aggressive repositioning instead, its much less cruel and much less expensive. He sleeps with a blanket rolled under his sheet so that he will lay on the other side, I try to give him more tummy time, and I am looking into getting him an exersaucer to further keep him off his back as much as possible. SIGH... so after a long week we are looking forward to getting another surgery under our belt and getting used to Ezra's new little smile. On a happier note Ezra experienced 60 degree weather for the first time in his life yesterday, and we had a bunch of little friends over to dye Easter eggs today. Pretty good ending to a pretty crummy week!

Bob had to work, but they saved one egg for him and Ezra to do later!