We have been amazed at what Dr. T was able to do with Calli's lip and with how it has healed this past week. We have had a lot of people ask us questions that we thought we would try to answer here.
One question we get a lot is if he had to use tissue from somewhere else or if it is all her own tissue. It is all her own lips! He just pulled each side to the middle, used stitches and glue, and then even did some stitching on her nose to open up her nostrils. Pretty amazing!
So, we are also asked a lot about the no-nos on her arms. These are not for any kind of wound or anything that had to do with the surgery - they are to keep her elbows from bending so that she is not able to touch her nose or mess with her wound. But as the week has gone on, she has figured out a way to touch it if she wants to even when she has them on. She is so smart! We take them off some so that she can feed herself, but we also leave them on a lot so that we don't have to worry about watching her 24/7 to make sure she's not messing with it.
She had a combination of glue and stitches, and the glue has fallen off and the stitches are starting to dissolve/fall out.
Here is a progression of pictures throughout the week. I think these first two were Thursday, day after surgery.
Saturday
Sunday (and her first swim - with us!)
Monday - also the day we had three doctors appointments in Houston.
Tuesday
Randy put these pictures together - before, early after surgery and then one week post surgery. Amazing!
We are so thankful for Dr. T and the work he has begun to do. We think he has done an amazing job. That being said, this week has not been totally easy! We have felt a lot of emotions watching her little face change from what it used to look like. We obviously know that we needed to do this for her, but we thought she was beautiful just the way she was. We want her to know that as she grows, and know that we only wanted what was best for her in terms of development, speech, and growth.
When we received Calli's referral in November of last year, we were given three pictures. We looked at those pictures many times a day, for a month. Then we got two new pictures in December. Again, we just studied and studied her sweet little face, praying over her picture and dreaming of holding her. We got two new pictures right before we traveled in April. Then we held her and knew her for the first time on April 8, brought her home and she became part of our family. Her surgery was 5 and a half weeks after we first met her, but we had already fallen in love with the way we knew she looked for all those months. Her face looks completely different to us now. We love it now, we loved it before - it's not an issue of better or worse. It's just different. And that is strange, especially when we have been working so hard on attachment. It's just a little strange and hard to look into a different face, even though we know it's our same Calli. The swelling will continue to go down, and other moms in the community of moms of cleft kids I'm in have told me they felt the same way but that you get used to it over time and just get to fall in love with them twice! :) We just weren't expecting her to look quite as different as she does, and the emotions have taken us by surprise a little. We love her so much and are so proud of how strong she has been through this whole process - it's crazy when we think back through what she has been through in less than two months! She is crazy strong, crazy resilient, and we are so very blessed to be her mom and dad.
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