On April 12^th, 2013 my husband Dennis and I welcomed our 2nd child Balian Michael into this world. He was healthy and perfect to us, but had a little trouble breathing because of the fluid in his lungs. We were over the moon excited and so in love! The next day we were told that he was going to be sent to the NICU just to be monitored. I was sick. To me he seemed fine. They kept reassuring me that it was just to monitor him. At that time the Dr. said lets x-ray his lungs to check things out and while they are doing that lets check his skull. The pediatrician said it looked like Balian’s sagittal suture in his skull prematurely fused together causing his head to be long and narrow and not round. When they finished it was still unclear so he had a CAT scan to determine if the sutures were fused. When the scan came back it showed that the sutures were in fact fused together. I cried. We were told that they were going to get us in touch with a Pediatric Neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital of Alabama. After this I looked up stories online to hopefully help my anxieties. The stories I read and videos I watched were reassuring. All the success stories helped me feel better about surgery. About a week later we met with the Surgeon.  He told us the only fix for this would be surgery and explained the two types of surgery. We had already read about them and were leaning more to the Endoscopic surgery. We were told with this type of surgery that he would wear a helmet till about 11 to 12 months. Once I heard the word surgery I burst into tears. How could this be happening? He was perfect in our eyes! The good news was he was healthy and this was considered a cosmetic surgery. On June 21, 2013 we took our  10 weeks old son Balian to Children’s Hospital of Alabama to get his surgery.

The surgery lasted about 4 hours (from prep to recovery) and was a complete success! When they finally let us go back and see Balian, Dennis and I were amazed at how great he looked. They had him pretty medicated still and were transferring him up to the PICU. After the surgery you could already see a difference, it was nice and round. I just wanted to pick him up and hold him forever and take all his pain away. Words cannot even describe the range of emotions I had that day, I wish that feeling on no one. The rest of the day Balian did great, they had him on some type of Tylenol to help with pain control so he slept most of the time in my arms. That was one of the best feelings. To be able to hold him again was so amazing. We were very lucky that he had mild swelling. Saturday, he had more swelling but not enough to close his eyes. Later that day the Dr. came in and told us that he was being released and we could take our baby boy home again. He was very lucky to only stay in the hospital for little over 24 hours. I’m so thankful for the nurses at Children’s Hospital of Alabama were amazing; they took such good care of Balian. Amen, the power of prayer and the determination of this strong willed little boy was absolutely amazing.

Two weeks after his surgery we went and picked up his helmet. After that we went back for a check up and everything looked great. Then after the next check up they said we could come back in 3 months. His head looks great. All the helmet check ups have been fantastic. We are waiting on our 3rd helmet and hoping this is the last, but either way is fine. We have our little boy here with us still and he is just as handsome as ever.