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My little bugger had his third, yes third round of surgery today for those pesky hemangeomas. Poor little guy. He'll thank us when he's older though...same thing with the helmet. Always seems like it's something, but by the grace of God it's always the best case scenario.
Our little guy has two hemangeomas; one is on the back of his head along his scalp. Doesn't really interfere with much but is pretty ugly. There is always the possibility of it 'maybe' bursting if he fell hard enough exactly on that spot, but nothing we were too stressed about. His other one is under his eyelid and near his tear duct of his right eye. This gave us concerns. We met with the pediatrician, eye doctor, and cranial specialist who all agreed that it would most likely interfere with his vision eventually and may mess up some of the proper growth in his eye area. Major problem.
For those of you who do not know what a hemangeoma is: a benign tumor, usually in infants or children, made up of newly formed blood vessels and resulting from malformation of angioblastic tissue of fetal life. (http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hemangioma)
The medical "solution' for these hemangeomas is laser surgery and a steroid injection to the hemangeoma itself. The ideal situation to occur is that the hemangeoma will begin to shrink and eventually disappear.
Many hemangeomas are said to continue to grow until around age 5 or so and then gradually shrink on their own, however the risk is the fact that you never know A: how big it will get and B: if it will in fact shrink and go away.
For us it was a necessity though because of the positioning within his eye.
So, as I said already, this was Mr. D's third round of this surgery. The first time he was about 7 months old and I think my husband and I were more nervous and scared than he was. We thought He has no clue what's about to happen!  But I tell you he handled it like such a big boy. He smiled and laughed through the whole process-waiting to have the 15-20 minute surgery took hours and we were discharged with 40-60 minutes after he came out of surgery.
Our son is fearless and unaffected by this. They gave me all these precautions but said if he could handle the activity and normal diet that I could allow it....well, my boy doesn't miss a meal (except the one they made him miss for his surgery!) He is always back on schedule within an hour to two hours after his surgeries and eating and drinking his usual amounts.
Today was no different from the last two times except that now that he is eating table food he wanted nothing to do with the juice after the surgery (the children are supposed to prove that they can hold down clear liquids before they are discharged). He was holding out for real food. We returned home and he took his nap with his sisters and come lunch time it was game on. He not only drank his milk, he ate all his ham, cheese, fruit, and bread....plus a second helping! Next thing I know when the kids are in the playroom my son is diving head first into the ball pit and tearing up the place. No one would believe this kid just had surgery this morning.
On a side note...I am a proud mommy today. I bought Pull-ups the other day and instead of calling them diapers or Pull-ups or anything like that (trying not to have my daughter associated them with diapers) I called them 'baby panties'. So I don't use them all the time in fact I use them as a reward sort of. When my daughter wakes up in the morning I put a diaper on her, however the 1st time she 'goes' on the potty she gets to wear 'baby panties'. If she 'potties' in the 'baby panties' then she goes back to a diaper but can earn the 'panty' back the next time she 'goes' on the potty. Anyway, she gets it and it works. So the proud moment is that today when she woke up from her 1st nap at 11am she earned her 'panty' and she kept that 'panty' dry (and used the potty) all day until bedtime.That's 7 hours (she went to sleep at that point).
Just yet another example of how people parent differently and how we should celebrate every achievement.