6 weeks old! March 7, 2014

Ryan is 6 weeks old today!

The craniofacial surgeon came by to look at him today and his cleft has gotten much smaller now that he’s a little older.  They don't know what happens to clefts as babies get bigger in utero, where he should be, but one possibility is that now that he's bigger, the cleft is proportionally a lot smaller.  The surgeon said that all clefts are different, but his cleft is pretty typical, not extra wide, and should be a routine fix.  His lip and nose will be fixed early, when he's 3-6 months old adjusted.  Adjusted means that the time is measured from his due date, not when he was born.  Prior to the lip and repair surgery, there are different methods they can use to approximate the skin and palate so that when they do the surgery, they don't have to pull things together as far and the result is better.  One of the methods is taping.  It's just what it sounds like.  They pull the skin closer together and tape it so it grows closer together.  The surgeon decided Ryan was a good candidate for taping and started taping today.  The surgeon was also going to tape a stent into his nostril to start lifting that side up, but he has the nasal cannula prongs in his nose, so coincidentally that's already doing the same thing.

He's grown enough that he ready to be in an open crib instead of his isolette.  He needed to be able to control his own body temperature and have gotten rid of most of the things connected to him.  They've been asking someone to bring down a crib for the past few days and for some reason, they haven't done it yet, so they’re using the isolette as a crib and leaving the top open.  Now that he'll be in a crib, they said I can bring in some receiving blankets to personalize his crib!

I kangaroo held him today for about 3 hours and he loved it!  He relaxed and slept the whole time he was snuggling with me, occasionally lifting his head up to look at me and change sides.  Holding him like this is relaxing for me too and snuggling with my boy makes the time fly by!