Payton Update..........

Jennie and Payton were finally let go from the hospital and are home and doing well. For those of you who didn't know, Payton was both with a minor cleft lip and needed some minor surgery. This first picture shows her before the surgery. It was a very small cleft and did not involve the pallet so there wasn't much to the surgery. They also did fix her nose as her nostrils were not the same size due to the lip. The doctors told us this was one of the smallest clefts they had seen and if a baby was going to have a cleft this is what they would want it to look like. If it would have involved the pallet, there would have been more surgeries to follow. With this surgery they actually just cut the lip where to indents are so the scar should not be noticeable. They then tweaked her nostrils to make them the same size and fix the muscle in her upper lip to make everything look normal. It is amazing what they can do with surgery. She looks absolutely great and as she gets older you won't be able to tell she even had anything done. The surgeon was really great and took great care with her.

Yesterday, however, was a very long day. Her surgery was scheduled for 7:30 in the morning as they like to get the babies done right away. We had to be there at 6:00 and I was surprised at how many people were there that early. We are thankful to Connie who spent the night at our house Tuesday and got Brooklyn off to school and watched the boys. We got to the hospital around 6:10 and waited until about 7:10 to be taken back. They then got Payton ready for the surgery and the doctors all came in and explained what exactly they were going to do and what to expect. At about 7:30 they asked Jennie to give up Payton as it was time. For a parent, that has to be one of the hardest things to do knowing you have no control over what is going on and just have to wait. They told us the surgery would be about 2 hours and we just had to wait in the waiting room until they were done. They called us at about 8:10 to let us know that they had just started. An hour and a half later they called us again and told us she was done and everything went well. We then had to wait about another 15 minutes while she woke up from the anesthesia and they got her ready. The good thing with a baby is that they pretty much let you go back right away instead of waiting for them to waken all the way up. We then got to go back and see her new lip and nose for the first time and the surgeon did an amazing job. The nose looks perfect and her lip looks normal as can be. It took her a couple of hours to get out of the groggy stage but she did latch right on and started nursing right away. That was a huge relief as that is the one thing they want to make sure of before they would discharge her. She struggled the first couple of minutes but I think that was more because she was numb. We stayed in the recovery room for about 1/2 hour and then they transferred us up to the Pediatric ICU to monitor her and make sure everything was OK. We thought for sure they would let us go the same day since she was eating fine, didn't seem to be in pain very much, and everything looked fine. Later that evening the surgeon came in and gave Jennie the bad news....she would have to stay overnight for monitoring. That meant that Jennie was going to have to sleep on a chair for the night with no change of clothes. Everything has turned out fine and the surgeon cleared her to leave at 6:30 this morning and we are now home. Thank you for all your support and prayers. We are so blessed to have so many people thinking of us and it has helped us tremendously in this endeavor. The last picture is an after picture of her lip and nose. There was not to much swelling but hopefully in a couple weeks or so we should see what it looks like without the swelling.