UPDATE: 12 days post-op

This is Mari-Grace's palate now. It's hard to hold her upside down, get her to open her mouth wide enough, snap a photo and not drop her (and that's even with Aunt Kelley helping !)

I hope to have a better picture to post of the palate soon.

She's doing great with eating and drinking. Our biggest issue has been sleep .... as in she's not sleeping !!! Which means MaMa doesn't sleep either.

We've been 3 days with no nap. Not a lot of fun ... because she still wakes up crying at least once, sometimes twice a night.

I'm going to try to do a quick run-down of the last week at home. She's sleeping now, so I need to head to bed soon myself.

We came home on Thursday, Sept 16 about 11:30 AM. I mentioned that I found infant feeders and I'm using playtex nursers with the nipples cut out to feed her.

Doc sent her home with Codeine/APAP(acetaminophen) for pain .... that triggered night terrors. She'd have about 2 a night. It even caused them in the hospital, but I didn't figure it out until Friday morning. From Friday morning until Monday night, she had nothing but plain tylenol for pain. I e-mailed the doc ... and they changed her to hydrocodone/apap. I gave her a dose about 8 Monday night ... she went to sleep finally at 11, woke up at 2 ... and cried until almost 5 am. I even tried another does of pain med ... it just made her C R A N K Y !!!!!

Then Tuesday about 4pm, Mom called me ... she was afraid her palate was pulling apart. I TOTALLY FREAKED OUT !!! I was standing in the pharmacy, with a store full of customers, crying like a baby. I was tired ... physically and mentally, and my baby's surgery had failed.

I raced to the car, and headed home to check on Mari-Grace when my senses returned ... did I ask the pertinent questions ... like "Is she bleeding?" "Is she screaming in pain?" "Is she eating and drinking?". By the time I got home, I had convinced myself that she was fine. I called a couple of friends, who have been thru this procedure, and they re-assured me that everything was most likely fine. (and yes .. I did call the Dr too, but it was after 4 pm, so I was unsure if I'd get a return call ... if things were bad ... I would've headed to the ER !!!)

Needless to say, I got home, looked at her mouth ... and everything was fine. The whole mom was seeing was where the "filler" stuff had started to dissolve ... just like it was supposed to. My friend Charlotte, who is an RN as well as the mom of a child who had the same type of cleft repair, came by, looked her over, and said her healing actually looked good.

This MaMa was whipped. Between the exhaustion from the new computer systems at work, and a week without a full night's sleep ... I was about to drop. I took a shower at Mom's and stayed there until about 7. My sister, Kelley, came over and took baby duty. She made me turn over the baby monitor, and sleep. I guess I relaxed knowing that someone was there to take care of Mari-Grace for me, because I crashed ... I slept all night, and didn't even wake up.

We went to see Dr. Buckmiller and Dr. Hartzell (the surgical fellow following our case). They were very pleased with Mari-Grace's healing. They explained that if I looked very close in MG's mouth, I would notice all sorts of stitching, openings, and exposed bone ... that it would all fill in naturally with time...not to panic. The nub on her lip, where they adhered it to the 2 sides, is beginning to lay down like it is supposed to do. They physically pushed her teeth back into her mouth during surgery, basically fracturing some bone to do so ... so the lip and gum aren't sticking out so far now.

The surgeons were amazed that she was taking nothing but tylenol for pain. They sent me home with some "BIG GUN" pain meds. This med acutally works for the pain, and doesn't torment her in other ways.

The last 2 days, the old Mari-Grace is starting to emerge. She's laughing and playing. She's eating well. She's doing great with her NoNo's.

If we can just get the sleep issue worked out, life will be great !!!

We go back to the doctor on October 1. Hopefully, we will get to advance her diet to soft foods and come out of the NoNo's some.

She's a finger sucker ... so the NoNo's may be necessary at night for a while longer. We shall see.

Overall ... she's been a trooper ... and she's doing great.

Thanks for all of the prayers and support.