Medical Stuff

Frankie had his appointment with the ENT monday down in Plano. I was nervous, but I think we did the right thing. The doctor said he never sees newborns with upper lip ties; he said with newborns, the most common frenulum issue is the tongue tie, and that he sees the upper lip tie in older kids, when their teeth have grown in with a big gap because of it, or they have speech impediments. I said I think I'd like to prevent all that, and also allow for his upper lip to splay up while he's drinking the bottle so he's not sucking his lip til it's red. The doctor agreed. He and his assistant stayed late to do the procedure. As soon as they brought out the little board they tie him down to, I got nervous again. We swaddled him and tied him down, the nurse held his head straight and the doctor numbed the surface, then injected more numbing stuff, and snipped the tissue. It bled quite a bit, so he applied pressure while Frankie screamed--probably more from being held down. Then he used silver nitrate to cauterize it. It looked pretty bad, but it's getting better every day. The doctor said to massage it daily so it wouldn't meld back together. I even tried to nurse but he's too used to the bottle now--his lip doesn't quite go up yet on its own, but I am too scared to force it to while it's still healing. When I know it's healed and isn't sore, I will try to pull it up while he feeds. Here's a picture of right after the procedure:

This is the scar on his upper gums...obviously there is also more scarring on his upper lip. That band of tissue was connected all the way down his gums--meaning if we hadn't clipped it, his lip would probably totally cover his top row of teeth. 

It doesn't seem to bother him much anymore (there was once when the pacifier pressed on it and you could tell it hurt). I hope it heals up totally this week.

  Then the next day (yesterday) we went back to Baylor hospital to get his ultrasound for his sacral dimple. The technician was really nice and did a thorough scan of his spine, and into his dimple. He was a little uncomfortable but I held his pacifier in and massaged his head and he calmed down. The radiologist then took a look at all the scans and at Frankie's dimple and said he looks great, and there is no indication of any neural tube defects. :) Very relieved to know those 2 things are taken care of.

Little Frankie before his ultrasound

   We still can't quite shake the fears about his lack of real eye-contact/interest/smiles etc, but he still has a few more weeks til we are technically allowed to worry lol.

   I love him muchly and we are excited to have a big thanksgiving feast tomorrow, with the Godparents Tim & Teresa and their sons Shane & Dillon. Norman has the day off, but Susan doesn't :( My mom might come over after her shift at 8pm. Can't wait to eat that turkey! It's kinda funny--last thanksgiving we were still in Houston, but we were supposed to come up to DFW to have dinner with Tim & Teresa. I think we got sick and couldn't make it until the next week, but here was the dinner I made.

 I remember that day because I cooked and cleaned and took pictures of the whole house for our realtor to find tenants, since we had just found out John got the job up here :) Very happy to be here and closer to family!