The first few weeks....

The first night was the worst as we knew we had this call to the hospital hanging over our heads worried that if he didn't eat enough we would have to take him back. God sure did us a favor by making him such a big baby, he had a little extra to spare as he learned to eat. He had a couple terrible feedings in that first 24hrs so that call to the doctor was full of fear. We made the call and they seemed pleased enough to let us go on our own. We had to mix his formula with a higher calorie content until he got the hang of it but otherwise he was 100% ours. It was a learning experience each time he ate but for the most part he was just a normal newborn eating, sleeping, pooping and crying. Our next step really didn't come for 3 weeks when we had our first visit with our Cleft surgeon. He took some pictures and did a very brief visit which was pretty disppointing but the main purpose of our appt. was to learn how to tape his lip so they could start stretching that skin in preparation for surgery at 3 months on his lip. We really didn't know what to expect, it was much less high tech than we both expected. Literally we took a special kind of foam tape and put on his face from one cheek to the other to pull his lips together. I guess we expected something a little more advanced. We were to leave it on as much as possible, even during feedings and change out the tape as needed. He also had some sticky film type tape that went on his cheeks for the tape to stick to. I remember her telling us to use that sparingly as the manufacturer had changed to something else and they didn't like it as well so we had to make use of what they had left. Kind of weird but we did it. He didn't really seem to mind the tape but we weren't so fond of it. Even we thought the cleft looked better than the tape over it. The funniest thing that happened was one day at church an older man asked us if Luke had gotten into an accident. Of course he didn't know but it was kind of funny to us that someone would think that. We continued on with the taping for 3 months and feeding him out of that tiny bottle. We would have to refill it during feedings as he was now eating quite a bit more.