Update on Jacinda's Surgery Plans

We met last week with the Craniofacial team at our children's hospital. We are so fortunate that we have the Operation Smile doctors here locally. The consult went really well. Jacinda was very cooperative with everyone.

The orthodontist we saw said that her teeth looked great so far. Right now, we just need to do what we'd normally do with a 2 year old, which is brush her teeth. He said we'd need to start orthodontic work probably when she's 5 or 6.

The plastic surgeon was very informative. He said that during her surgery, he would do 3 things. The most important thing he will do is close her palate. Then, he will touch up her lip just a little. He was pretty impressed with her lip repair, though. The third thing he will do is try to even out her nose a little bit. He said that that is the hardest part and that her nose will probably be a bit uneven forever. We don't really care, because that's something you don't even notice unless you're looking really closely.

He also said that we need to meet with the ENT surgeon at some point soon. If she needs tubes in her ears, they will do that during the surgery as well. As far as we know, she doesn't have issues with ear infections, but it's pretty common with cleft kids to have ear fluid issues.

We also met with the team's Speech Pathologist. She doesn't deal with speech really, mainly just with feeding issues. She was very impressed that Jacinda is using sippy cups and not a bottle. She will work with us while we're in the hospital to teach Jacinda how to eat with a repaired palate. She also said that if we need any help getting Jacinda's speech therapy services taken care of, she will help us.

Surgery is scheduled for Wednesday, February 3rd. Jacinda will only need to stay in the hospital for 1 night, assuming everything goes well. She will need to be on a liquid/soft food diet for at least a week. She's going to LOVE that part! The good news is that our surgeon does NOT use arm restraints for kids Jacinda's age. It's fairly common for kids to have their arms in splints after surgery so they don't mess with their surgery sites. We were really worried about that and were happy to hear that we won't have to deal with it.

We just had Jacinda's evaluation for Speech Therapy services today (Tuesday). She is developmentally on track in all areas, except speech. In fact, she is ahead developmentally in a few areas, like fine motor skills. She does have delays in expressive and receptive speech. Pretty soon, she will start speech therapy once a week.