Friday, June 29, 2007

Hello again! Time for a quick update...
Jordan is officially 9 months old tomorrow (8 months if you consider she was one month early)!


We had our first flight as a family last week. Gma and Pop Pop (my mom) flew us to Colorado to see Pop Pop's family. It was great getting to spend time with them. Thankfully, Jordan's ears did fine on the plane thanks to her ear tubes. Unfortunately, flying with two kids two and under wasn't as easy. Yikes. Remind me of this in a year or so when I say I'm ready to have another baby.

The day we got back I took Jordan to meet her new craniofacial surgeon. Dr. Kawamoto agreed to see her and we are SO thankful. I'll post some links to a few articles about him when I get a chance. His plan...
Palate - He wants to close her palate in October at the same time that Dr. Jones works on her fingers and toes (the roof of her mouth from the soft palate in the back up to the gumline, leaving the gumline open). He wants to wait to work on her left eye until she's 5 or 6 years old and also advised we wait to clear that blocked tear duct until then too (with her opthamologist).
He didn't talk any farther down the road but she will probably have her gumline worked on at age 7 or so.

The tentative date for her next surgery is OCTOBER 22 where two fingers will be separated, possbily releasing some of the constriction bands on her other fingers and getting rid of some excess tissue. Dr. Jones will also separate the toes on her right foot then. The prognosis doesn't sound good for the toes since they tend to grow back together after separation (I guess it's because they naturally stay together whereas the fingers move and stay apart). The palate will be repaired then as well.

Since it gets confusing I'll give my best guess for her surgeries...
1 yr: The upcoming surgery (palate, toes, fingers)
2 yrs: Possibly removing index and middle fingers on left hand, extending the short thumb using a bone graft on right hand (from hip??).
5 yrs: Begin work on eye (duct and position and shape of eye)
7 yrs: Gumline repair (usually done when adult teeth start coming in I think)
Late teens: Final cosmetic lip and nose revision to "fine tune" the nose where it is uneven and also add fullness to the top lip.
Possible extra: If she ends up with an underbite due to the palate problems she will potentially need jaw surgery sometime.

Countless people have said, "She had her surgery so now she's done right?" and it just gets confusing to go into it all so hopefully this schedule will help.

As always, we appreciate you checking in on the blog and are so thankful for your prayer and support. Since summer should be a little slower around here I am planning on just posting some non-update related stuff on here and making it a kind of family blog for us. Look forward to some great posts on the happenings in our lives. :)

Prayer Requests:
Jordan's Development - She is on track cognitively and socially but is about two to three months behind in her gross motor and fine motor. Her Reflux is SLOWLY getting better and she's starting a new medicine to speed up her "intestinal transit time." Pray that it works and she stops spitting up. Praise that she is waving now, standing while we hold her arms, and even starting to use her first sign, "more." Praise also that she is learning how to eat without a roof to her mouth. She sneezes less and the food comes out of her nose much less too. Yay!
Her speech and language is quite behind. She seems to be about 3-4 months delayed and is not babbling yet (bababab, dadadad, lalalalala, mamamama).

Thank you again for checking in!

jen

2 comments:

Seagers said...

Jen,
Thanks for the updates and prayer requests. We love you all!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the updates! Jordan will be a year before we know it! October isn't far away! We'll continue to pray for her upcoming surgeries!