Max's Belly Button

When Max was born, he had a definite "outie" belly button.  Then, later on, he seemed to have the more typical "innie".  And from time to time I would notice it was one or the other.  

I never really thought much of it.

Then one night while I was at a school board meeting, I got a text from Uncle asking if he could call me because Max's belly button was bleeding.  

He seemed to have suffered no trauma and he wasn't complaining of any belly pain.  But, sure enough, his belly button had pooled with dark red blood and stained through the front of his shirt.

I called in to the advice nurse and they made me an appointment for first thing the next morning.  The doctor checked it out, irrigating it and rinsing away the dried blood, and nothing happened.  She kept squeezing water into the area and when it kept coming back clean, she determined it might've been a tiny cut of some kind, but that there didn't seem to be anything to worry about.  And so we went home.

Max and Max Baby waiting for their doctor's appointment

Playing with the seal in the examining room

Even Max Baby caught a ring!

Iron man gets into the action

All clean!

Then we got home and about an hour later, Max came up to me and pulled up his shirt, revealing that his belly button was, in fact, bleeding again.

I called the doctor back and she arranged for some blood tests for the following morning.  As we finished with those, we headed to the cafe downstairs and got everyone ice cream for being brave and well-behaved and the doctor called back, from home, and said she wanted to have him take an ultrasound, so we waited around for an hour or so for that, and then went back across the street to pediatrics to have another doctor peek at his belly with a magnifying lens.

Still no consensus about what was going on, but there was something on the ultrasound that led the doctor to wonder if perhaps one of the connections from his bladder that had gone through the belly button and out to the placenta, etc. in utero might not have been entirely walled off like it was supposed to be as he developed.  And so we also got a referral to the pediatric urologist - the same one who had done Daniel's surgery about a year and a half before.

On a side note, I would like to comment that this is what it is like to have health insurance - when your kid has a weird belly button experience, the doctor can order blood tests and ultrasounds and send you to a specialist and you just get to go and take care of him.  It's pretty awesome.  Oh, and when Max had his blood taken the phlebotomist actually made little tourniquets for his toys and "took" their blood as well, so he wouldn't be afraid.

So we waited for a couple of weeks for the appointment with the urologist and in that time the bleeding stopped.  Of course.  It's like a car that will only rattle when you drive it but purrs perfectly for the mechanic.

When we headed to the urologist, Max brought a handful of toys with him to keep him company - Max Baby, of course, but also Donatello and Rubble, Squishy Mikey and Batman.  Even Thor made it.  While we waited to be called back, they got acquainted with the waiting room.

And then when we went back to the diagnostic room for the fancy contrast x-rays he would be having, they each got to line up on the bed.  They even got to put on exam gowns and have their vitals taken!

Max looked cuter in his gown than Rubble did.

They inserted a catheter to fill his bladder up with contrast liquid and take pictures.  The urologist said he didn't see anything terribly out of the ordinary and certainly nothing to worry about, but he did note that Max's bladder is very close to his belly button and perhaps that's what the shadow on the ultrasound had been.

And suddenly, it all made sense - Max's in and out belly button.  It wasn't that it couldn't decide - it was as simple as when Max's bladder is full, it pushes against his belly button and it "pops out".  When it's empty, he has an innie.  

That's right - just like a Butterball turkey has a pop-up "done" indicator, my son has a pop-out "better go pee" indicator!  This, by the way, has been QUITE useful to know.

The triumphant patient got to select some vitamins in the pharmacy afterwards.