Thursday, March 18, 2010

Gen's surgery - Finally!

Forgive me for taking so long to post again, but adjusting to life with a new toddler in the house, blogging seemed to be the last thing on my mind. :O)

I wanted to update everyone though and let you know we are going to Boston Children's Hospital this Sunday for Gen's surgery early Monday morning. Yay!! Finally! It seemed like it took forever to get a date set. Now it's just a few days away. We have one of the best doctor's in the country, Dr. Mulliken, doing Gen's operation. She'll be having her palate repaired and her lip tacked together at the top only (called a lip adhesion). They'll be doing a full lip repair about 3 months after that. The reasoning for this is because her cleft is very wide at the front of her gumline and Dr. Mulliken is concerned that if he attempted to a full lip repair along with the palate repair, the lip might come apart because of the high tension.

I've heard other adoptive parents of cleft children say how they actually missed their child's cleft after the surgery because their smile just wasn't the same anymore: big, open, toothy grin. Wow... now I know just what they mean. Gen has such an endearing smile and I'm a little sad knowing her face will never again look exactly the same. If it wasn't for the speech problems, and the social handicap she would endure the rest of her life, I'd have to think twice as to why I would even do surgery at all (no problems eating here!). Most of the time we are out in public I forget she even has a cleft. People are very polite and don't stare. Some are too busy to even notice I think. It's always the children that point and ask... what is wrong with her lip Mommy? It doesn't bother me at all; children are curious and want to understand everything they see. Sometimes I explain to them about her lip, if the parent seems oblivious to their child's query, or doesn't quite know how to answer them. Sometimes I just don't have the time to stop and chat so I continue on. Most everyone though smiles at Gen. She loves people and being out and about! Where ever we go she waves at practically everyone that walks by, and who can resist a cute little toddler waving at you with a great big smile and dimples to boot?

An update on life in general... Gen is doing wonderfully and has already grown some since we've been home, up a clothes size and 1/2 a shoe size as well. She continues to learn new words in ASL and now has quite a little vocabulary: more, eat, please, thank you, Mama, Dada, sleep, hot, cereal, cookie, cracker, apple, water, bear, dog, chicken, lion, giraffe, outside... There's a few more I think but it's late and I digress. She'll also tell me when she's pooped (one sign she learned inadvertently, the sign that crosses all language barriers - the wave in front of the nose, ha ha). It only took a few times of me doing this when I changed her diaper (man, I thought Aidan's BM's were strong! PU!) for her to catch on and think this was the sign for diaper changing! She always tells me right away and if you look at my last post, I think potty training isn't too far into the future. :O)

Well, it is getting really late and we have co-op in the morning. I should be in bed. We'll post from the hospital to let everyone know how Gen is doing. God bless!

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