Not so bad after all!

As I had feared, last thursday was the day. Heading to our appointment I was nervous, scared, sad, anxious, you name it, I was it. Upon our arrival Dr. K assessed Graham's progress. As we are, he was very impressed. The space on Graham's lip appears to be significantly smaller than when we began, as demonstrated by the pictures I posted last week. Sure, this is good, really good. But, that means is was going to be time to start the nasal molding part of the NAM. This is not so good. For Pete's sake, the poor little guy had just gotten to the point where he tolerated the plate and now we are going to add a wire that sticks into his nose. I was not a fan.

As Dr. K sat designing and building the piece of plastic that would mold my little guys nose into perfection we chatted. He told my mom and I about another blog that chronicled another little girl going through the NAM. In fact, she had her surgery shortly before Graham was born. You can check her out here. Although she started out a little different than Graham, the results are nothing short of amazing. Reading through her blog was like being inside my head when it came to the emotions surrounding caring for a child with cleft lip. It was so refreshing to know that there was someone else out there that knew what I was going through.

Soon enough it was time to fit the plate with the newly added nasal stents. After some adjusting we got a good fit and amazingly enough he didn't seem to mind it too much. Sure, there was some fussing and head shaking, but as he did with the plate alone, he settled in within a few minutes of putting it in. Praise the lord, this might actually be ok. And, it didn't look quite as bad as I had feared.

While we were there I asked more questions regarding the time line of the molding and surgery. As with most things in life, only time will tell. Dr. K said the process would most likely take about 6-8 weeks but we would reassess every week when we saw how Graham was improving. In a few weeks we will have a meeting with our surgeon to talk about timing of the surgery.

That night we had dinner at the beach club with the family. Graham was happy as a clam hanging out on the towel and watching all the big kids. What a trooper!