The Lip Surgery - 3 months old

The time had come for Luke's first surgery. With it came a lot of emotions. We were so ready to get started with the repair process but at the same time scared to death of sending our 3 month old into a 2 hour surgery. We couldn't feed him anything after midnight so thank goodness he was sleeping through the night. We let him sleep as long as possible in hopes of avoiding to much crabbiness over missing his morning feeding. We of course sat in the surgery waiting area forever as they got ready for him and as a big gift to his parents, Luke was awesome. He never cried about being hungry, he just sat in our laps and even fell asleep right before they took him. I again think it was God's way of making it just a little easier on us as parents. We had enough worry already. It was really hard to let him go but we couldn't wait to see our "new boy" afterwards. The surgery took a couple hours as they also put in ear tubes since he was having some issues with fluid in his ears as a lot of cleft babies do. They came to get us when he was in recovery and I was allowed to go hold him as he was waking up. It was amazing to see him that first time. His nose looked so perfect and he had a full lip. I remember Matt and I laughing and saying, "I'm a real boy" like in Pinocchio. They released him to his room shortly after recovery as he would spend one night in the hospital and must be eating again before we could take him home. He slept a lot and we brought his favorite "the bouncy seat" since he wasn't so keen on sleeping in his crib but especially those nice steel ones at the hospital. We had supper as a family at the hospital and then Matt & Madison headed home for the night and I stayed over with Luke. He did great with his very first feeding, not showing any pain at all and just sucking it all into his tummy that was obviously hungry. The night went pretty good and by morning we were good to go. The surgery had gone well and we were sent home with some arm bands for a few weeks so he couldn't mess with is sutures. He had a brown piece of tape over his stitches that the doctor wanted us to leave on as long as possible. He warned us that it would get pretty gross and it did. Once it started to fall off, we were able to change it. The tape looked like a little mustache, it was kind of cute. Recovery at home was pretty easy, he was on Tylenol for a day or so but after that it was back to normal other than the tape and arm bands. One surgery down, we were so glad!