Matthew's X-Ray Results

"Although the skull appears brachiocephalic, the coronal, lambdoid, and sagittal sutures are visible and patent. There is no evidence of craniosynostosis."

YAY! No surgery!

This still leaves Jon and I in a bit of a predicament. I asked Dr. Bhui (the pediatrician we were seeing) if he could guarantee 100% that Matthew's head would round out on his own, and he said no. He also said that he was pretty sure that he going to have craniosynostosis, based on the shape of his head. I asked him if he recommended getting Matthew one of those custom-made molding helmets, and he said he has every reason to believe that his head will round out, but a helmet would definitely guarantee it. He said to go with my intuition. Our next step would be to go back to Dr. Shah (our family doctor) and have him submit a referral to the clinic at BC Children's Hospital that deals with head shapes. I've done a bit of google-ing since our appointment yesterday, just searching on other infants that had a brachiocephalic skull, and what they've done (and didn't do!). Most parents have posted that they did Do the helmet, or wished they would have. One interesting thing I found was that it said that infants with a brachiocephalic skull often have weak neck muscles and so they have a hard time holding their head up against gravity, and struggle with learning to roll over. That's Matthew exactly! He's not NEAR as good as Kayla at "tummy time" and he still can't roll over. My mom and I have been practicing rolling over (back to stomach) with him for the past month or so, and he can get his legs over, but he just can't get his head/shoulders over yet. Interesting...

I've been humming and hawing over what I want to do (in terms of pushing for a referral or not). I don't want to go through all of the appointments etc (and money!) if it would round out on it's own. I don't want to jump the gun on this. But...after I had washed Matthew's hair today, I looked at his head shape and nearly died. Thank goodness he has hair, and hair that lays nicely. When it's wet and laying flat against his head shape looks horrible! I think I'm going to push for the referral and see what the experts at Children's (I'm assuming that's where they'll refer us to) say. It doesn't cost us anything to get a second opinion. I don't want to be kicking myself when he's older and getting teased about his funny head shape...

Anyways, I still have to discuss this with Jon. Stay tuned for updates!