Thanking my lucky stars

Today Monkey had an appointment with a neurologist about the size of noggin. During Monkey's 6 month check up his pediatrician was concerned because his noggin was measuring off the charts (just housing a big brain, right :)?). To be on the safe side, she ordered him to have an ultrasound through his soft spot since it was still open. The ultrasound reading was unclear, which meant on to a CT scan. I kept Monkey up all morning and kept him entertained since he couldn't eat or drink to avoid having to be sedated and he slept through it like a champ. We got a call from our pediatrician that night that the radiologist had read his CT and everything looked fine. Big sigh of relief...until the next morning. The radiologist said that she'd gone home and thought more about his scan, had another radiologist look at it and although they didn't see anything like a tumor or mass, they felt an MRI was needed to be 100% sure. In a way I was grateful that this person took a second look if they were unsure, but our sense of relief was gone. We were told Monkey would have to wait 3 weeks for his MRI. I would look at him often, take a deep breath, and remind myself that he would be fine. He came into this world almost two months early and has been catching up ever since. But the cloud of worry and the "what ifs" wouldn't be gone until we knew for sure. The day of Monkey's MRI, I drove home feeling postitive that we would get the reading and everything would be fine and finally we could put it behind us. However, we received a phone call from our pediatrician (whom we just love) saying that the MRI showed that Monkey either had slight excess fluid around his brain (no big deal) or brain atrophy, or shrinking (a very big deal). I finally gave myself about an hour to cry. I cried out of frustration , fear, and worry...and then I cried for the parents who get life changing results from this instead of unclear ones. So we packed Monkey up early this morning and took him to his appointment. They checked all of his developmental milestones, they asked questions and took notes, and they left to review the MRI again. And finally they came back and told me what I knew in my heart when we started this process months ago: "Your son is fine, he is right on time for his age...he just has a big head." A big noggin, just like his Daddy, that's all. And for the first time in months, I feel like I can breath again. I offered up a little prayer, packed up my sniffling, blue eyed boy, and realized that Monkey truly is my heart walking around outside my body :).