A Picture Post

Does anyone else take THOUSANDS of pictures of their kids??  It's basically a full time job to take care of these pictures - delete the bad ones, edit the good ones, and organize them into folders. And don't even get me started on the video files...SOMEday I will watch these videos and get them organized...

For now, I want to share some special pictures from the past week or two! We have had such beautiful weather lately!!



Amaaaaazing!

God is amazing! Our surgeon is amazing! Logan is amazing!! The weather is amazing .... ahhh!! Life is GREAT!!! :-D

Here was Tuesday's schedule. It took WAY more time to "get ready" for this surgery than for the surgery itself!

6:10am - check in and wait.
7:30am - they take him for surgery
7:47am - he's already in recovery!!
8:30am - we were heading home!!!!!!!!!

It was completely unreal!! I know that the palate was already done and fixed for the last 3 weeks but it was covered up by that ugly stinky splint - so it was amazing (there I go with that word again) to see it for the first time! It looks a bit more "bumpy" I guess is the word, than ours but the coloring is normal and I can barely see where the seams were made that connected the different pieces together. The inside of his cheeks had dissolvable stitches which I believe are already gone and that is also healing nicely!

There have been some changes in Logan in the past 3 weeks - some good, some not so good! ;-)

• He got at least 2 new molars since the last time that I could touch his gums! Poor guy!!
• When he sneezes, you no longer have to watch out for bits of flying food!
• He doesn't give kisses anymore!!!!! :-(  I am hoping he relearns this and quick!!
• He had a pretty good scowl going on when his splint was in and here it is - several days after removal - and he still uses that scowl! However ... he uses his SMILE so much more! :-D

Get this thing out of my mouth!!!!

Give. Me. Food.

The splint removal surgery has been scheduled - hallelujah!!  It is set for Tuesday, May 15 at 730am.
It will be an early morning (arrival time of 6am) but I would much rather have this surgery time than an afternoon one like last time. There will be very little hunger cries this time around! Phew! :-)

I am not feeling very inspired tonight when I write this blog so you may find it pretty dry - but it is a pretty important update. So here are the facts... :-)

Dr. Mann, our plastic surgeon, will basically just be taking all the stitches out that are holding the splint in place right now. There are lots of healing areas on the insides of his cheeks where they had removed some tissue and I honestly don't know if there are stitches there that will need to be removed or not. Logan has not allowed me to inspect very closely! I am very excited to see what the roof of his mouth will look like! It's been just 3 weeks, but I have a feeling that it will have done a great deal of healing.  I've done a little bit of reading on the internet about palate repairs and it seems that putting a temporary splint in is not the norm for every doctor. As far as I know, Dr. Mann has done it with all of his patients - although I guess I don't really know that either. I personally am glad that he does it this way - I cannot imagine not having that area covered up while it healed; the opportunities for it to have gotten injured (from fingers, toys, his brothers, etc) would have been way too high!

Surgery itself will take approx 30 minutes but they will put us in a room and observe him for a few hours. I expect to be able to go home in the early afternoon. (Yay! for not staying overnight!!!!! :-D)

I got to thinking the other day about how quickly Logan will change over this coming summer and there are so many things to be excited and thankful for!!!

** He will soon be able to experiment with ALL kinds of food that he's NEVER had before!!

** He will be able to produce different sounds and maybe learn some new words - I am so so sooo excited to hear his cute little voice talk to me!

** He just may gain enough weight that his pants don't fall off! Grandma can only put so much extra elastic in the waist of his pants ... ;-)

** I am hoping that the drooling will subside ... I would like to pack up at least half of the 50 bibs that I have sitting around this place!

Since it's officially Mother's Day
in about 30 minutes, I will leave you with some pictures of my beautiful children ... I am so lucky and blessed to have each one of them!

A little (long) recap...

Oh Boy! We are now in our second week after the most recent surgery. This was an exciting surgery as it repaired the soft and hard palate in Logan's mouth. When all healed, he will be able to eat normal foods and will be able to make more sounds other than just "nana." He has a temporary splint in his mouth right now on "top of" the repaired palate to protect it ... that splint will come out next Tuesday - the 15th. It's starting to kind of stink (literally :-)). He had to be on a strict liquid diet from surgery until the splint gets taken out. Pediasure and ice cream has GOT to get old, wouldn't you think?! I feel so bad for the little guy - he tries putting any little crumb he finds on the floor from the boys in his mouth and any bit of food he sees, he nods his head at me and makes the sign for "more." Poor thing. That's another thing that I am so thankful for. Sign Language. Not that Logan has caught on to too many of them - but because he cannot use his voice or different words to talk to me, I feel so much more connected to him when he signs to me "more" or "please" or "all done."

Back to the surgery. It was a long one. Four  hours. And an expensive one. Almost $20,000!! Good thing for insurance, right?! Except that I've already gotten a bill for the entire surgery AND a statement from the insurance company saying that they wouldn't approve the inpatient stay. Sigh. That is a topic for another post. Another day.

At the preop appointment with the plastic surgeon the day before, he walked me through what they would actually do. It's AMAZING what they do - in a little tiny mouth, with all his little tiny parts. I am so thankful for the medical knowledge and experience our surgeon has. He was born with his soft and hard palate missing; when you looked into his mouth - where the roof of his mouth should have been - you only saw a strip of bright red tissue. This tissue was his sinuses - which thankfully work just fine! More than fine actually, as anything he ate would many times be promptly sneezed back out of his nose! :-) Anyway - back to the surgery. The plan was to "rearrange" some tissue and skin that was already there to "cover up" that gaping hole. I don't remember ANY of the medical terms he used, but that's basically the jist of it. An important part about the rearranging though was to make sure the muscles up there got back to where they were supposed to be so he would have better control of his sounds and would be able to progress past the "nanas" and into the other important sounds. As it turned out, they had needed to remove tissue from the insides of both of his cheeks to add to the palate. This will all heal in time too - it just made for a much sorer mouth for the little guy!

That's all I will write on that for tonight ... but I will leave you with a couple images of him ...

This is right before surgery (he has NO idea why he cannot eat!!!!)

This is right after surgery (still pretty doped up!)

And lastly ... this was taken last week (still kind of swollen but feeling a bit better!)

The reason for my Miles of Smiles blog ...

Only my family will be reading this at first, I am sure, so you already know what I am about to say, but I will say it anyway. We have 4 wonderful children whom we love deeply. Like any other parents, we have dealt with our share of emotional ups and downs. But our world changed completely at the end of September 2010 when we found out our Baby Boy would be born with a Cleft Lip and probably a Cleft Palate. The purpose for "Miles of Smiles" is to share our journey with you ... the surgeries, the trips to all the specialists, the syringe feedings, the normal mommy venting (this is normal, right?!), the no nap days, the arguments with the insurance companies ... but also the many, MANY blessed days in between!

NEVER in a million years ...

... would I have EVER thought I'd be sitting here writing a blog. But here I am. If I can be honest - it's actually pretty scary! It would take me HOURS to write papers for school - to get just the right words to say something - or rearrange sentences so paragraphs "flowed" better. But, I am going to remind myself that I am not going to be graded and I am not trying to impress anyone. So here goes ... I am going to write how I talk. Good luck. You may have to reread what I write a couple times. I do tend to jump around a lot. For instance, I have recently noticed that I explain WHY I did something, before I tell you WHAT exactly I did. So again - good luck.