Such a relief!

We are home from Shriners. They are going to do her surgery! I can't tell you how thrilled I am about this. If ever we needed a boost, now was the time. They said they may do the surgery as early as 9 months because of how narrow her cleft is - now we are just waiting on a call from the nurse who handles the scheduling to find out when it will be. Honestly, part of me is hoping they will wait until she is closer to a year before they do it - she's still so tiny and I worry about them putting her under anesthesia - I'd like for her to be a bit bigger before doing something like that. But I guess we shall see what happens.

It was a pretty overwhelming 48 hours, I'll be honest. We had a three hour drive to the airport, which Miss Sunshine mainly slept through. The first plane ride went well - she was happy and played most of the way. When we got in, we waited about 40 minutes for the cab company to come pick us up (Shriner's was paying for the cab so we had to use a particular company) and then the driver didn't know where our hotel was so he had to GPS it - but we made it. Took a while to get there because we were going through at the tail end of rush hour, but oh well. Check in at the hotel was amazingly easy - and my cousin and his girlfriend came in from right outside Chicago to have dinner with us, which was really nice. We ate at Gino's East, which is like the ORIGINAL Chicago pizzeria - and it was FANTASTIC! We all ate way too much. Then it was back to the hotel to sleep - well, Shane slept anyways. Miss Sunshine tossed and turned all night - being in a strange bed, in a strange place she just didn't seem to get comfortable. I am sure Daddy's snoring didn't help matters either! So Miss Sunshine and Mommy were pretty tired come Wednesday morning. But we got up and got loaded up and over to Shriners and spent the day meeting with 8 different doctors. We met with a social worker, a psychologist, a speech pathologist, an orthodontist (he didn't really do much since she doesn't have any teeth yet, ha), a nurse practitioner, an ENT and two plastic surgeons. There is also a pediatric dentist that will monitor her as her teeth come in that we didn't actually meet with because we ran out of time. Then, after you meet with all those doctors individually, you go into a room with ALL of them (and there are two or three in each specialty except for the orthodontist and dentist) for a round table about the plan of care. But they are going to do her surgery and all her follow up care from now until she no longer needs it or is an adult. I am so exceedingly grateful that there just aren't words. With everything else that has been going on, knowing that I am not ever going to have to worry about anything with regards to her cleft not being covered by insurance is such a huge weight off of my shoulders, I can't even begin to describe it. I am rather nervous about having to travel so far to have the surgery done, and then traveling with an infant who just had surgery, but tons of Mommy's do it all the time, so I know I can do it too.

On another note, I got my bracelets from CCA today! Super exciting. AND a bunch of my friends have told me they want some too, so I am actually going to have to order more. I think it's great that I have such supportive friends. I wrote to the local news stations and newspaper wanting them to possibly run stories or an ad about it, but haven't heard anything back yet. My husband's cousin works at the newspaper so we may try to pull in his connections if we don't hear anything back by next week, because I think this is something that really needs to be recognized, and there isn't much of a basis for assistance in our area that I have been able to find. Maybe I'll have to start something up myself. Who knows. It would be nice to actually physically meet with other parents who have gone through what we are going through, though. Maybe someday...