Brody's MRI

We went to Children's today for Brody's MRI. We knew it was going to be a big trip to begin with because it is a long drive and we were planning on taking all of the babies. Here I was totally prepared, packed and ready to go and I get a call from his neuro's office last night. "Did anyone tell you Brody needs to come sleep deprived and hungry??" UM NO! Nobody told me that. They told me if he wasn't able to be tired enough to fall asleep and stay still during the MRI, we would have to reschedule so they could use anesthesia. This is the part where I started to panic a little, making a second trip is not what we wanted to have to do. How were we supposed to keep a baby up for hours and on top of that- IN THE CAR? Their favorite place to sleep is the car, ugh! All we could do was try.

We woke them all up at 6am this morning (they usually wake 7:30-8am) to feed them and turned on The Little Mermaid to keep Brody occupied (which they all ended up watching). We headed out of the house at 7:15 to meet up with Bethany, our extra pair of hands for the day. Brody was trying so hard to drift off before we even got out of the neighborhood, he wasn't interested in hearing how cute and chunky he was and I apparently wasn't interesting enough to look at. We ended up letting him sleep from about 7:30-8am. I figured it was better to let him have a cat nap then rather than when we got close to the hospital. We were able to keep him up after 8am by using cold, wet burp rags (I know sounds mean), musical toys, goofy faces, with an occasion head rub and arm shake thrown in every few minutes. We arrived at the hospital around 9am and I carried him to help keep him up. While in the waiting room it was time for them to eat again but they didn't want us to offer Brody a bottle until he was on the table, hoping it would push him over the edge and he would fall asleep. So we fed the others.... right there in front of him. Poor guy :[ He didn't seem to mind, just wanted to go to sleep SOOO bad. He would try to smile and have fun but his eyes would be rolling back at the same time. If we looked away and stopped talking for just a split second he was gone!

This kid is a TROOPER!

When it was finally his turn to go back, Bret took him and Bethany and I strolled the halls of the hospital with the others. It was only about 30 minutes later, Bret called and said they were done and Brody had done great! He didn't even need the bottle to go to sleep, the second he hit the table, he was gone!

Big man finally gets to eat his bottle!

After the testing, we headed over to Dr. Honeycutt's office to get the results. When he walked in he had a big smile on his face and said everything looked great, thank you Jesus! His ventricles looked much better than his last MRI (a lot smaller) and it seems as if the shunt is working properly. He said Brody still has a lot of damage due to his IVH (brain bleeds) but only time will tell what that will mean for his future. I remember telling Bret when we were going through all of this just a few short months ago "As long as he can know who we are (Bret myself and his siblings) and be happy" it will be ok.... and he is and he does! By no means is this all that I desire for his life, but I thank God he came this far. I have every reason to believe his little life will be as happy and bright as his sunshiny blonde hair :]

"Love you Brody and as always SO PROUD!"

-Mommy & Daddy