MRI

Today Megan had an MRI to look at a dimple she's had since birth. Her pediatrician wanted an MRI to make sure it's not connected to anything. She did great and is home sleeping (fell asleep on the ride home).

Background
We found out about the dimple not long after Megan was born. Her first pediatrician showed us it in the initial exam. That pediatrician wanted to do an ultrasound to rule out a possible tethering to the spinal cord. So at 4 weeks Megan had an ultrasound. That was tough, she had to lay on her stomach and be very still, which as any parent knows, was quite difficult. Sucking on my finger proved to be the answer though and after that she was still and they got their pictures. Everything came back negative - yay! So we put it out of our mind. Fast forward to Megan's 6 month well check with a new pediatrician (ended up not liking the first one). He wanted to do an MRI on the dimple; said that the ultrasound can only see the spinal connection but can't rule out a sinus connection (which could lead to an infection). After getting an additional opinion from a pediatric neurosurgeon, and friends that are doctors / pediatricians we scheduled the MRI.

Back to today / last night
Since she has to be still for the MRI for almost an hour, she needed to be sedated. So last night she had to stop breastfeeding at 2am, could have water / pedilyte from 2am - 4am and then nothing after 4am. We had to be at the hospital at 6am, which meant leaving the house at 5:30am. I woke her up at 1:40am to feed her so she had something in her stomach in the morning. After that she slept until 5am. Russ rocked her while I got ready. She cried awhile when she realised there was no milk coming, but really she was pretty good. She babbled most of way to the hospital, falling asleep just as we got there! And then waking up when I took her out of her carseat of course!

They used a gas to sedate her and I held her as they gave her the gas. That was pretty hard since she got pretty upset, turning bright red while she was crying. It took about a minute, slightly longer than normal *I think* because she was crying too hard and not breathing in as much. I sang to her and talked to her and once she was asleep they escorted me out to the waiting room. It took a little over an hour and then I was called back to recovery where she was awake and fussing a bit. She nursed and nursed so more. They wheeled us to a room, all the while Megan was nursing :-) When we got to our room we had to stay another 30min while they monitored her vital signals; she kept nursing :-)

Then we were free to go. There was some crying while they removed her IV (they put it in after she was asleep) but once I picked her up she was good. Then she wanted to nurse again! Finally she was ready to go. She babbled the whole way home until we were about 5 minutes away when she finally fell asleep and she's still sleeping 40 min later :-)

Yay for the MRI being done, I'm so relieved! We should hear from our pediatrician by the end of the week.