She's On the Charts!

First, thank you for your sweet comments and notes on my last post about pure exhaustion.  A few of you, very gracefully, reminded me that we cannot do anything in and of ourselves, we try, but we fail miserably.  Thank you for that reminder, the reminder to keep looking to Him for strength.  Nora had a much better night last night, now if I could only sleep, ha!

Nora has had a couple of appointments since we have been home.  We have already met with the craniofacial plastic surgeon of the cleft team at a "local" Children's Hospital (about an hour away), and she has been to our pediatrician.  I am happy to report that she is on the charts!  Little Miss is in the 25th percentile for length!  For weight, it is a bit of different story, she is not really on the charts.  But, she will be!  She's a LilyKid! 

So serious ... the eyes will get you every time

Nora got five shots today, a skin test, and had blood drawn for various lab work.  She will need a few more lab tests as well, but this was more than enough for one day!  Poor baby, so hard to hear her cry but we were fairly easily able to comfort her which this Mama loves!  Aside from seeing Nora cry so hard, the hardest thing about this appointment and the appointment with the surgeon is the paperwork, the paperwork that requires me to write out "UNKNOWN" so many times ... history of illness - unknown, family history - unknown, this and that - all unknown.  I know that from October 21st and on, she will have many knowns, but it is still painfully obvious that there are so many things we do not know.

We know that these toes are irresistably adorable

We have to go back to Children's next week for a couple of appointments, but the surgeon is scheduling Nora for surgery in mid-December.  After examining her and considering her age, he has decided to do the lip and the palate repair together, one longer surgery.  I was a little concerned about this as I hadn't seen any of my blog friends experience the same; however, in discussing this with our pediatrician today (who we love and respect), she was pleased to see this - one surgery at this point means one anesthetic, one recovery period.  Per the surgeon and our pediatrician, there is no reason to do them separate at this point, the palate repair should be done sooner than later for speech purposes and waiting on the lip repair doesn't do anything based on Nora's current age (normally a lip repair would be done at a couple of months old and the palate repair would be done at around a year).  Nora's palate is wide so the surgeon is not confident that he will be able to close it completely (from what I understand, however, this is not that unusual and a follow-up surgery may be required in the future).  It is a little bittersweet to think that we only have about six weeks left of Nora's wide, sweet smile. 

Wonder if Nora's future smile will be as cheesy as her big sister's?

 

So thankful that Nora is home ...