Cephalhaematoma and Calcified Haematoma - my experience

Due to my daughter's head not being in the right position when she was about to come into the world, she arrived with a cephalhaematoma on the side of her head which wanted to be born first! Cephalhaematomas are usually seen in newborns when they have been ventoused into this world. It is a haemorage of blood between the skin and the membrane which is immediately next to the skull. See a good cross section picture on Wikipedia if you want to see what I mean. DDs was rather like a large wobbly blood blister covering half the top of her head! After the initial "yuck" reaction I rather forgot about it, except when people used to assume she'd been delivered with ventouse and tell me their birth story leading up to their child's cephalhaematoma. The midwives reassured us that in a month of two the blood would all have been reabsorbed into her body and no-one would be able to see any sign that she'd had one. Other parents said much the same thing. While in hospital, Emma had jaundice, which may well have been related to her haematoma.

Well, the weeks passed and the cephalhaematoma grandually reduced in size. One day it was gone, but.... now a bony lump the size of my little finger was visible in it's place. Off I went to the Health Visitor (Nurse) to find out what this was. She had no idea and referred me to the GP. This was a bit worrying.... I then saw a lovely Doctor, who also had no idea what it was, and suggested that maybe two of the skull plates had overlapped. She was very keen to reassure me but I was pretty rattled. She referred me to the Paediatrician at the hospital, and so we waited for the appointment to come through. After a few weeks we turned up to see the paediatrician. It turned out we'd been given THAT appointment for something else, but he was good enough to deal with both issues in the one visit. He said our baby had a classic case of Calcified Haematoma. If it was so classic, how come the other health professionals hasnt even mentioned it as a possiblility?! Anyway, with our permission he rooted around and found his camera, but it was out of film. He said he would love some pictures of her head for teaching purposes, so we sent him in some pictures later that day. The calcified haematoma he explained was just that component of the blood being reabsorbed rather slower than the others. He said that in a couple of months it would be gone too. And he was right, pretty much. Her head is still not symetrical, being squarer at the back on one side than the other. She took an age to grow any real hair, so it was noticeable for a few years, and I heard one comment at the swimming pool when she was little about her head, but fortunately she is a girl and does not need or want to have a short style (and hopefully wont ever decide to shave it all off!). For a few weeks I was fighting back the worry of "what ifs" about what could be going wrong with our DDs head to make it "grow" wrongly. I so wish that the health professionals had been able to tell me at the outset what it was, rather than having to put her on the waiting list to see the specialist. So that is why I wanted to write this, so that someone esle can have their mind put at rest much sooner.

Hopefully from the below pictures taken over her first year you can see the progression as her Cephalhaematoma is replaced by the Calicified Haematoma and then she is just left with an asymetrical head.