Phoebe's Cleft Lip

If you read the post I wrote before we had Phoebe about her cleft, you've probably been wondering how everything turned out. Well, let me tell you--things with Phoebe's cleft turned out as fantastic as we could have hoped for! She has a tiny cleft lip, but it's not as severe as it could be, and she's been able to breastfeed even with the cleft (something that is always questionable with clefts). Besides that, she has a small wave in her gum line and her nose looks slightly smashed on the side with the cleft. But that's it! She doesn't have a cleft palate, which is probably the biggest blessing because with a cleft palate comes potential problems with feeding, hearing, and speech.

What does this all mean in terms of surgery? Sometime between Phoebe being 6 months old and a year, she will have a surgery to cosmetically repair her lip. The surgery will be performed at Seattle Children's Hospital and we've been told that it will take about three hours. She'll stay overnight at the hospital and then we get to take her home the next day. They'll check up on her the following week to make sure that everything is okay, but that's it! The doctor told us that there's a good chance that the wave in her gum line will fix itself, but if it doesn't, the surgery for that wont be until she's between the ages of seven and nine. Same diagnosis for her nose, except surgery for that, if needed, wouldn't be until she's a teenager.

So it looks like we're in for a visit at Seattle Children's in a couple of months and then we just get to go on living life as normal (or as normal as possible when you're sleep deprived because your baby wakes you up at least twice every night to feed!) Quite frankly, we kinda think that her lip makes her super cute and we'll be a little sad to see it go! But what a blessing that we have the means in today's world so that it can be fixed and she can feel like the beautiful girl that she is when she gets older.

Thanks to you all for your love, care, and support! The response I got to my previous post was overwhelming and uplifting. The Selfs are blessed with amazing friends!