Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Three years (and 1 day!)...

Yesterday marked three years since Miss Sunshine's palate repair.  I would have posted yesterday, but I'm sick with the plague (not really, but I am really sick) and just didn't feel up to it.  Honestly, I don't feel up to it today either, so no promises on the quality of this post...

I think I touched on most of emotions regarding her surgery in my last post.  So, I thought I'd do a little update, and then give you all some pictures of her journey to date.

Miss Sunshine has FINALLY made it on to the charts - she's roughly 25% in weight and 40% in height.  It only took us three years to get here!  She's been done with speech therapy for a year now - and while she does still substitute W for R, she is getting better about saying it correctly when it is modeled for her.  We have no other developmental concerns - she's well above age in pretty much everything.  Including imagination, it seems.  She's got that in spades.  I can hear her right now having a serious conversation with her stuffed Bullseye toy and our cat, Dante, in the living room.  It's so great to watch her grow and flourish and turn in to this amazing child.  Her personality is BIG (Diva doesn't even being to do her justice), she is FULL of drama of all kinds (good and bad), she loves to sing, her favorite colors are pink and purple, and she is the princess of the house, no questions asked.
The day she was born - you can sort of see her cleft here.
My first glance of her!
Her cleft palate
Another Palate shot
Waiting for surgery (Sorry, I can't seem to get this to go the right direction!) That is a Haberman (or Medela Special Needs) nipple in her hands.
Post-op, right after she woke up.  You can see the thread through her tongue taped onto her cheek.
1 week post-op - the white patches are where they opened her palate around the gumline to meet it in the middle.
One year post op - she would NOT open her mouth.
Two years post-op (with her Monte's Bears for Clefts bear)
Three years post-op!
Three years post-op (she was surprisingly cooperative for these shots!)
Three years post-op (she was not so cooperative when I wanted to take a normal picture...)

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