Category: Hope

After four months, the medically inevitable is days away for Hope: her first surgery is Tuesday morning.

This surgery (the first of three, we’ve been told) will repair her lip and nose, bringing the two sides of her lip together and straightening out her nose.  It’s mostly cosmetic, while the second surgery, to repair the palate (hopefully sometime this fall) is more functional.

The Civee and I are looking forward to getting this out of the way.  It’s a routine surgery and the doctor who will be performing it has done good work in the past.  But we’re not looking forward to the night before or the few days after the surgery.

We’ve been told we won’t be able to feed her after midnight the day before the surgery, which is scheduled for around 8:00.  I have asked the hospital if we could drop her off at 1 that morning.  They said no, probably because they don’t want to deal with a crying, hungry baby any more than The Civee and I do.  To put it mildly, Monday night will be rough.

After the surgery is also looking to be challenging.  We have no idea how she’ll react to all the work she’s had done.  We hope it doesn’t mess with her feeding.  She’s usually a very happy baby and we don’t want her temperament to change for a long time.

Our other concern is something that’s surprised both of us.  Obviously, we love our daughter and want her to be healthy.  But we also love her appearance.  How are we going to react to seeing our baby looking very different?  Of course we’ll still love and accept her (and this surgery, even though it’s cosmetic, will have a great impact on her quality of life), but she’s just going to be a little different.  We’re sad about the prospect of saying goodbye to how she looks now.  But she’ll still be our Hope.

Over the past few weeks, she’s grown a lot.  At her last hospital visit (three weeks ago), she was 13.5 pounds.  She’s getting better at grabbing objects and moving them to her mouth (her success rate is 50 percent…the rest of the times, she usually hits the object against her forehead or cheek). She’s making different kinds of noises when you talk with her.  And, in a move that’s going to have us childproofing the house pretty soon, she’s able to get on her hands and knees and inchworm her way around.  She doesn’t make it that far, but here’s a short clip of her in action:

Hope, a mouse toy and a lot of drool…

Saturday night, the girls and I went to dinner. The Civee and I wanted to go to this Indian place, and Hope didn’t really care where we ate.  When we go out to eat, as long as there’s room, we’ll put Hope’s carrier on the table angled where we both can see it.  Saturday night was no different- The Civee and I sat across from each other, with Hope on the table.  She fell asleep shortly after we got there.

The waiter came up and started to make small talk, saying his wife is pregnant and due later this year.  Then he asked “what’s up with her,” while pointing to Hope.

I quickly replied “she’s just sleeping,” not realizing he was asking about the bandage across her face.

I guess by this point, The Civee and I have gotten so used to Hope’s cleft lip that when someone’s trying to ask about it tactfully we don’t realize what they’re doing.

Before she was born, as The Civee and I were being told about what having a baby with a cleft lip and palate meant, we were concerned.  Everyone’s aware of the cosmetic issues cleft kids face- that wasn’t a big deal to us.  We were warned that she may not put on weight (because she wouldn’t be able to eat correctly) and that in a worst-case scenario, we’d have to take her to a hospital to have her fed through an IV.

Fortunately, Hope’s been growing.  A lot.  She’s already more than 11 pounds.  And she’s tall (I think I know where she gets that from) for a three-month old.  She’s developing her own little personality, and thanks to some do-it-yourself surgery prep, her cleft has already closed by more than half.

There are a few pre-surgical preparations that doctors like to use before a cleft lip or palate repair.  Some involve implanting devices into the baby’s mouth which, in addition to being painful, have to be adjusted by a doctor on a regular basis.  Our doctors like a nice, easy approach.  Basically, we take two band-aids, two orthodontic rubber bands and a piece of surgical tape, put it together and apply it to her face like you see in the picture above.  We’ve been doing this since she was two weeks old and at first, we didn’t think it was doing much.  But at each appointment with our cleft team, we’ve been told that the cleft is closing and should be easier to fix when it’s surgery time.

Unfortunately, a child with a cleft lip and palate may need at least three surgeries- one to repair the lip, a second to repair the palate and a third to repair the gumline.  Hope’s first surgery is scheduled for the middle of next month.  We’ve been told the second surgery will be in the winter.  And the third will be sometime after all her adult teeth have grown in, between the ages of eight and ten.

So in a month, Hope’s lip will be repaired.  And the next time a waiter asks us what’s up with our baby, we’ll be able to say “she’s asleep” and have that answer their question.

As I mentioned, Hope is developing.  Over the past few weeks, she’s discovered her hands and feet.  Now she’s learning what to do with them:

For the record, Hope laughed for the first time this morning at 9:20.

I was the cause of the laugh.  A well-timed fart joke which cannot be shared in a public forum caused the laugh.  While this was the first, it won’t be the last.  Nice to know this cements my position as father/chief entertainer.  Even nicer to know my daughter appreciates comic timing.

One of Hope’s favorite places in our house is her Aquatic Adventure Gym, which The Civee and I can let her either lie down in or play on her stomach while we observe from afar.  The gym has an obvious marine life theme and the centerpiece is an octopus dangling from the top.  For a while, Hope has noticed the octopus.  But now, she’s starting to try and reach for it with mixed results.

I can’t decide if I like the video better with or without YouTube’s new vuvuzela feature.

It’s becoming clear who the new star of the blog is…

Hope was born two months ago today (in other words, The Civee and I have kept her alive for two months now).  She’s grown a lot and can already do some amazing things. Like this:

Was it wrong of me to laugh?

Last fall, a few weeks after The Civee and I found out we were having a baby, we were walking through the baby section of Target and saw this onesie (and yes, that’s a technical term) that had a dinosaur playing a guitar, exclaiming ‘You Rock.’  We thought that it was cute and decided that boy or girl, our child would look good in it.

Well, Hope has outgrown all her newborn clothes and is now onto the three-month size (even though she’s a little more than six weeks old) so The Civee and I figured now would be a good time to have her wear the very first thing we ever bought for her.  As you can see in the picture, she was quite happy to be wearing it (she smiles all the time and it’s pretty cool).  Some people have commented that the outfit is nice, but because it’s blue and gray, it’s not really girly.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what that means.  Hope has a lot of pink, red and purple clothes and looks really good in them.  But there’s nothing wrong with her diversifying her color palette. Besides, as she is one of the world’s youngest Yankees fans, I’d much rather have her wear the traditional Yankee colors than one of pink outfits with a pink interlocking NY (even though she has one of those too).

So people think that the blue and grey isn’t girly enough.  But the guitar-playing dinosaur is really cool.  And that’s another thing with most of the girls clothes out there.  Go to any baby clothing aisle and (besides the color) you’ll notice a tremendous difference between the boy’s clothes and the girl’s clothes.  The girl’s shirts often have messages like “I’m So Cute” or “Mommy’s Little Sweetie” or “Future Princess” written on the front.  On the other hand, the boy’s shirts have things like “You Rock” or “Little Fire Chief” or “Future Rocket Scientist.”  Notice anything different here?  While there’s nothing wrong with exclaiming a baby’s cuteness, why should my daughter feel unladylike if her parents wish to proclaim the possibility that one day, she could be a rocket scientist, fire chief or rock star?

And as I mentioned, the dinosaur playing the guitar is really cool.

The Civee and I can’t believe it: we’ve kept our daughter Hope alive for a month!

The past month has certainly been different for us- having to arrange our schedule around her and paying attention to every single little cry to tell if she needs food, to be changed, or just wants our attention.  But it’s been a lot of fun.  We have this little person who’s developing her own personality.  She can smile (we think), lift her head up and give us some serious eye contact.  She also likes to go out with mom and dad.  The Civee and I have taken her to all sorts of places and not once has she caused a scene (so far).

If I had one complaint, it would be that everyone who says babies sleep 16 hours per day was lying.  Because whenever it’s my time to watch Hope late at night, she’s wide awake.  Of course, it could just be she wants to hang out and watch Sledge Hammer! and Lost with me.  And I’m perfectly fine with that.

The surprising thing (to me) is that I haven’t dropped her or forgotten her anywhere.  There’s still time to do that, but with each day, I get a little better at this parenting thing.