Day 611 - Emotional Day 😭
Friday, September 2nd, 2022
In the morning James got his first boo boo. 🤕 He had pulled down his Farrell bag that had a velcro clip attached to it and managed to clamp down the clip on his finger. He didn't react to that but as soon as Mom removed the clip on the finger and unclamped it James cried loudly. James doesn't really cry but this was different. Real tears because he felt pain. Then he took a nap.
Today James had his final helmet appointment. The woman we had been working with was going to be transferring to another office so we decided to make today our last day as well. James is 20 months old (16½ months adjusted). This office stops helmet wearing at 18 months. It can take 9-18 months before a baby's skull is fully formed. During this time some babies develop positional plagiocephaly. This means that there is a flat area on the back or side of the head. Positional plagiocephaly does not affect brain growth or development; it is purely a shape issue. James' soft spot had already closed but we still saw some slight improvements seen on the scans which is why we had continued.
The appointment started out with James needing his final scan. She put on his cap to flatten his hair and James did not like that. Then Mom laid him down into the scanner and he started crying. Then he became hysterical. This was the loudest cry we had ever heard! He didn't sound like a baby with a a trach on a ventilator; it was just a normal baby crying. James reached for Mom and when she picked him up he squeezed so tight and dug his head in her chest. This was the first time we had ever experienced James crying and wanting to be held. At almost 2 years old, some parents would be sick of this by now but we were in shock hearing this and seeing him asking for comfort. The helmet lady looked at us confused because she didn't understand that 1) He doesn't cry 2) We've never heard him sound like that 3) He has never wanted to be held before. To clarify, James started giving us hugs recently, but these were when we asked (sometimes) and then he would expect tickles in return. This was different. This was the innate need for extreme comfort to overcome stress. In the first few months, many babies crave the warmth, comfort, and squeeze of being held. Some like to be held for what seems like all the time. This phase doesn't usually last beyond 4 months of age. To put this into perspective, James was barely held during his first 4 months of life, and the first time he was actually held (not just laying on a pillow) was at 56 days, almost 2 months.
We attempted to get the scan by playing the Moana theme on YouTube but James wasn't having it so we gave up and went into another room to give him a break. At this point James was hyperventilating, and we had we had never seen him like this before. We needed to remove his shirt which normally he would let us do with no problem but since he had worked himself up he was not having it. Part of the reason that we think he got so upset so quickly is that we needed to wake him up from the middle of his nap to go to this appointment. We ended up leaving the appointment with awkward photos and a poor scan. The whole point of having this final helmet appointment was to compare photos and scans from our first visit. Instead we traded that for hearing our baby boy scream for us. It would not be worth it to us to reschedule.
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