Children't Hospital Artwork
The appointment was really long. We went in at 8:50 and didn't leave until almost 5:00. They started with another ultrasound. During the ultrasound he starting playing with his toes - it was super cute! Next, they did an MRI to help them determine the extent of the cleft. They told us that it is definitely a complete unilateral cleft of the lip and palate. After the MRI we met with the surgeon and he told us about the surgeries. The baby will need an appliance that moves the gums and palate together placed surgically that will be in place for six weeks. He will need a surgery called a lip adhesion that will start to fix the nose, sew the gums together, and move the skin of the lip closer together. He'll have another surgery to completely seal the lip and fix up the nose more. Finally, at 9 months or so, he'll have another surgery to fix the palate. We were a little overwhelmed to hear about so many surgeries during the first year; however, we got the impression from the team that he will be in really good hands. We still have the same attitude towards the situation, we know that everything is going to be fine and that we will have a wonderful baby, we're just not excited about lots of surgery.
These pictures are actually from the last ultrasound that we posted. They didn't print these ones out for us before, but our doctors made a disc with all the ultrasound pictures to give to the specialists at Children's. Needless to say we took the opportunity to download the images onto our computer before we handed it over! In these you can see the cleft on the baby's left side pretty well. His face is in the middle and you can see the uterus on either side. In the bottom picture, his hand is at the bottom of the picture. Feel free to email us if you have any questions.
2 comments:
This all sounds so overwhelming, but you guys have such a great attitude. I hope the best for your family! Do you have any names picked out for him yet?
We love you! We are thinking about you often... Thank you for keeping us up to date with everything going on. I am just so grateful that you are in a place with such great Healthcare. We really were impressed while we were in the area and I bet it is even better in Boston. Let us know what we can do and if we can help in any way.
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