My how time flies!!!

I was just reading some post on the cleft advocate from new families on the site and it brought back so many memories of the day Julia was born. The emotions are overwhelming!!! Well, Julia will be 2 in 3 weeks and I just can't believe it. She is doing so well! We had our craniofacial meeting in March and she is good for this year. We need to keep an eye on her speech and make sure she continues to do so well with her sounds. She is with out a doubt......ALL GIRL!!! Julia thinks that her older brothers walk on water and she clings to them all of the time. They are so good with her. We are so blessed to have 3 wonderful children. I hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!

20 months.......wow!!

It has been a while since I have posted, but having 3 children and the holidays upon us.....it has been CRAZY! Julia is doing great. She goes to "school" 3 days a week and loves it. She has developmental therapy on Monday and speech therapy on Wednesday. I have seen some improvement over the past few months. We don't have our meeting with the Craniofacial team at UNC until March. I am anxious to see what they have to say. Anyway, we are really looking forward to Christmas and can't wait to see her and her brothers on Christmas morning.......EXCITING!! Hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and safe New Year:)

Yes... we are still here....look how big she is now!!!!

Wow......16 months old and getting bigger everyday! Julia has had a lot going on since her 1st birthday. We went to the Outerbanks in July and she really enjoyed being there with her big brothers and mom and dad! Connor is in 7th grade and Zachary is in 4th and Julia has started "school" 2 days a week! She loves "school" and she is starting to babble soooo much since she has been going. Julia has therapy on Mondays, DT and OT. This has been going on since May and she is doing GREAT! The bad news is that one of her ear tubes has fallen out..... after 5 months!! AND.... she already has an ear infection. So, it looks like tubes again in November:( Oh well.... hope everyone is doing well and I hope to give an update before Christmas;)

WOW....what amazing first year!

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Okay... time to update....

Well, Julia' surgery has come and gone and all is good. She was scheduled to have surgery on Feb 18th and after waiting all day they canceled her surgery and sent us home. They had an emergency in the OR and I completely understand.... didn't like it, didn't make it any better... but I understand. SO... we went back on Friday, the 20th for surgery. They took her back around 230pm and ENT put tubes in her ears and Dr. van Aalst took the calcification off of her face... 2 down 1 to go... the soft palate cleft. Well, Dr. van Aalst came out and said there was no cleft in the soft palate! WHAT? I saw it 4 months ago.... are you sure? Well, it is gone... by the grace of God.... is the only explanation, but it is gone. Anyway, she now has what is called a submucous cleft palate. It is easier to research it on google than for me to try to explain it. Basically, there is no open hole in her mouth.. there is a covering over the hole now. Now the obstacle will be her speech. We will work with speech therapy and keep a close eye on her speech development and go from there. Dr. van Aalst said there is a chance she may need a surgery when she is around 4 or 5 to help with her speech, but that is yet to be determined. Isn't this great...no "no-no's"...she can keep her bottle until she turns 1.... she can eat real food.... all the things that would have been taken away from her for at least 6 weeks!!! Plus she is a mad woman on all four.....CRAWLS all over the place!! Take care everyone:)

How fast time goes by......

Well, things have been crazy the past few months. We have had our first Christmas with Julia and the boys went to Montana for a week while Julia and I had girl time. Julia's surgery is fast approaching us and we are all getting a little anxious. She is battling yet another ear infection along with RSV this past week. She is getting better every day and all we hope and pray for is she is healthy for her surgery.
She has started to crawl and wants to stand all the time. She is very curious of everything going on around her and she loves her big brothers more than I can say. I will keep everyone up to date once her surgery is over.

Craniofacial team appointment

Well..where to begin? Julia had her first craniofacial team meeting today and Lee and I think it went pretty well. Dr. van Aalst, her plastic surgeon, is very pleased with how her lip is healing and so are we. He spoke with us about her upcoming palate surgery and what to expect. She will be in the hospital for atleast one night and will keep those wonderful "no-no's" on for 2 weeks!!! The recovery for the surgery is going to be a challenge for a 10 month old. No bottles and she can't have anything thicker than stage 2 baby food for a month. Oh well..... we will deal with it! Next we spoke with a social worker and she was wonderful. She gave us some wonderful information to help us get Julia off of the bottle before her palate surgery, which she must be off or the surgery will not happen. Then we saw speech and they said they would re-evaluate her after her surgery to see what type of therapy she will need. We also saw an oral maxillofacial surgeon and we will not need a bone graph until she is around 6 years of age. She saw a pediatric dentist and they just looked in her mouth.....they didn't say much. We also met with ENT and went over her recent ear infections and we all agreed that she needs tubes. They will put those in when she has her palate surgery in Feb. The doctor informed us that she may need 2 or 3 sets of tubes, we will just have to wait and see. We are all a little tired, but I think she did GREAT! We will keep you updated on her progress. Happy Holidays!