Surgeon Appointment

this week has been nuts! lawton had a fever for a few days, we met with the surgeon, then i drove (with ci, thank goodness) 7 hours to a awesome bachelorette weekend, then home yesterday and lawton has fever and virus again ;( so, no pics today, but bachelorette ones to come....and yes, i went to a club....all i wanted to do was dance but thought people around me would freak out. who is this pregnant gal in a BAR? now i am thinking i shouldn't have given a darn...pregnant ladies like to have a good time too! anyway, on to Dr. Matthews.

friday morning we met with "the dr. matthews". i say that because going through all of this, i kept hearing his name. i kept hearing that he is "quirky" but amazing. that i "had" to see him. so, my OB made an appointment for us and to say it was special is telling it lightly.

i was in the waiting room eyeing everyone that walked in the door. do they have a cleft lip? why was the baby screaming in the next room? does the teenager that looks like he just had his nose done, was he born with one? i am so sensitive to these things now and i can't help but to look at everyone's lips and nose. by the way, the teenager and kids were adorable ;)

i did see a lot of TAPE. tape over the lips and nose. more about that.

so, we waited. and waited. i needed to go to the bathroom and said, this will get him to come and of course, as i opened up the door, he was doing the same, so, we bumped into one another. he sat down, had a very soft, calm voice and asked us what questions we had. my mom was there to write everything down because i needed to listen. well, i just started talking. didn't look at my notes once, went from my heart. my mom and jack sat there with their mouths open. where does this come from? how did i do this? how did i know what to ask? he said that he was impressed by how much i knew and what research i had done. i was shocked because i didn't feel i had done enough, talked to as many people as i needed to.....don't remember much to be honest. i just went with my heart.

here are some things that i learned:

-he will not close the lip at 3 months. he will check wyatt and see when he is thriving. he will not close it until he is between 6-9 months old. they tape it (like i saw in the waiting room) to let the skin close while they cry, etc. makes sense. they don't want to close it too early because they have shown that they will have to do another surgery later because of growth. now, i was a little taken aback with this. i thought i might "hide out" for 3 months like i did with lawton and then the lip would be fixed. see, there is a lesson in everything. now i can't "hide out" and protect him. he will be like every baby and will just have some tape over his face for a while....

- he will not close the palate until he is between a year and two years old. i was mistaken. i thought this happened at 11 months or so. same thing with growth and again, just how wyatt is growing and thriving depends on when he does it.

-do not throw out breastfeeding. he MAY, big emphasis on MAY be able to do it, but i would have to cheat a bit with him.

-he is doing a study and has found through a blood test from the mothers of these children and their cord blood that what causes this to happen in lack of absorption of vitamin B. i participated, and we will see in a week or so if that is the same for me. i took all my folic acid and it isn't in our families that we know of. doesn't matter to me how it happened, but it will be nice to know if i am deficient in anything!

-he will come see wyatt in the hospital and then we see him once a month after that.

my mom then asked "is there anything that brooke needs to do in the remainder of this time?"

his answer: no, you have done enough. relief. you don't need to talk to anyone. relief. every child is different. you have done enough research. just enjoy it.

that is when i started crying.

that is when he asked if he could come over and put his hand over my forehead.

that is when he asked me to close my eyes and think about all my anxiety. to think about it hard. to let it go. to breathe. he sat there talking to me like this for 5 minutes. my breathing got better and once it did, he took his hand off.

quirky? yes. special, YES. healing hands over my forehead. YES please. 

this is our doctor. this man looked into my eyes and will take his healing hands over my son and take care of him.

blessed? YES.