Scheduled the first surgery...

We met with Dr. Jang today to setup Nick's lip adhesion surgery. Right now he wears tape across his lip to hold it together and the surgery will basically take the place of the tape. Wearing the tape has already made his face look different. Before the tape his profile was flat, you couldn't see his nose. But it's looking great now, his cheeks are getting quite chunky and that helps too. The surgery will be November 15 and I am not looking forward to it. Knowing the risks of surgery is scary and having him taken away for me, even if it's only a couple hours, is going to be very hard. Plus, he won't be able to eat for 4 hours before the surgery and I know that won't be fun either.

This is not his formal lip surgery, he will have that at 6 months old. This surgery will keep his cleft from becoming wider and will allow a better overall outcome when he has his formal lip repair.

We have a therapist that comes every other week to work with Nick. She helps me figure out some good exercises for him. Right now we are trying to get him to be able to lay on his stomach. His muscle tone is pretty tight so it's hard to get him to straighten his arms out but the more we work on it the better he seems to get which is reassuring. He still has to wear splints on his hands for his fingers. The contractures are still pretty tight but the splints seem to be helping.

He weighed in at 11 lbs today! He is really filling out and his legs have quite a few dimples!! All of my kiddos have been pretty chubby babies and I don't expect Nick to be any different :o) He loves to hear rattle sounds, it's the one thing that gets him to smile every time! It's very cute!

As always, thank you for the continued prayers.