Coburn Kids

I had to share the picture to the left, it’s the ONLY one we have of Caden smiling with his cleft when he was about 5 months old right before his lip surgery.  It wasn’t for lack of trying either, Caden’s adjusted age was right at about 6 or 7 weeks old so it fell right on the normal timeline for babies and their first smile. I grabbed it with my cell phone and it’s truly the most precious and prized picture I have of my little guy! Every Cleft Mom is so sad when those wide lil’ smiles disappear.

So today was another one of those marathon-doctor appointments for Caden, this time with his Cleft team. My Dad was great and offered to watch my 2 girls for the 5 hours it took. Daniel was there to take care of Caden at the appointment which I’m extremely grateful for! I can’t lift Caden right now as I did something to hurt my shoulder.  No idea what, but last week it was hurting a bit. Then on Saturday I had to carry Caden around for about 2 1/2 hours at a birthday party the girls attended and I majorly did something to it then. Breathing is painful… I’ll live though.

I’ll run through the doctors we saw at the Cleft Clinic:

Financial – First we saw the financial coordinator.  We may be able to get some help to pay for Caden’s Cleft clinic appt.  So good news there.

Speech – Lots happened here.  She wants us to get a swallow study for Caden ordered, to help us in the never-ending quest to find out why Caden doesn’t like liquid.  It’s really quite odd, considering he eats fine. She also wants his speech stepped up majorly.  An 18 month old should have about 20 words… we have Ga.  Which, technically, doesn’t really qualify as a word. It’s darn cute though!!

Orthodontist – We found out that around 5 Caden might need another surgery we weren’t expecting.  This one involves x-rays and looking at the area around Caden’s nasal cavity to see if we need to fill it in with some more bone. We went over his other surgery that he’ll need, the famous break-the-upper-jaw-and-move-it-forward one.  They all, of course, have fancy sounding medical names which I couldn’t say let alone remember for the life of me! We were referred to a Pediatric Dentist for Caden, very important, as well.

Plastic Surgeon – Next we got to see Caden’s plastic surgeon, who just happened to be on call there, Dr. Warnock. He’s very very pleased with how Caden’s palate and lip look. The only thing we have to watch is the redundant tissue on his lip since he’s biting down on this. He’s also getting 4 new teeth, all at the same time.  Poor thing.

ENT- We talked to the Ear, Nose and Throat doctor about Caden’s recurring sinus infections and got some advice on that.  One of Caden’s ear tubes is blocked, but this is a wait-and-see. Otherwise, follow-up in 6 months.

All in all it was really a very informative appointment and finally seeing the Cleft team was a blessing.  I was disappointed we couldn’t talk to a Geneticist but will probably have to do that on my own, but at least we are now on the books with the Cleft team.