Julie's Boggle

Tomorrow is finally the day on which Jonathan is going to get his lip repaired at Great Ormond Street Hospital. (The earliest they would do the surgery is at 3 months but we got them to hold off because of our holiday to SA.)

Fortunately Jon has only a partial cleft and it does not affect his palate at all. So all going well, this is the only operation he’ll need while he’s still a baby. The next one, to repair the small gap in his gum, will be when he’s 8 or 9 years old.

* For those who do not want to read the grisly details, skip the next paragraph! *

The operation will apparently take 2.5 hours and during that time they make two cuts, one on each side of the cleft. Then the two sides are pulled together and a lot of complicated joining is done to create one unbroken set of muscle surrounding the mouth. The scar is arranged to be over the left-hand ridge above his lip and the outer stitching is done with very fine thread to minimise scarring. Lastly they’ll put in some stitches in his nose to pull the left side in slightly.

It was a lot easier thinking about having all this done when he was still growing inside me and not the gorgeous little chap we’ve come to know and love. We’ve got so used to the look of his face and his lip — to us it’s just our cute little boy, not a genuine defect. But if he didn’t have this operation, it would affect his speech development, so it really does have to be done. And sooner is better from that perspective.

The hospital anticipate a quick recovery and are prepared to send him home as soon as he is feeding properly, probably the following day. I then need to take him back next week for them to remove the outer stitches — this is done under sedation.

The advantage of Jon being so young at this point is that he’s not going to be as introspective and sorry for himself as an adult would be under similar circumstances. Yes, the poor little guy will have to get through a fair amount of pain and discomfort over the next two weeks, but without the capacity to anticipate future pain (i.e. when the painkillers wear off), he’s probably a lot better off.

We’ve been very comforted to know that we have lots of friends and family praying for Jon as we go into this, thank you for your support. We’ll definitely be posting up more news and pictures soon.

Jonathan and I have been home from SA since Sunday morning, but it’s taken both of us a little time to get back into the old routine.

It was a good holiday. Different, of course, to any holiday I’ve had in the past because this time I was taking my work — baby Jon — along too.

This made for a somewhat punishing routine for the first two weeks while Tom was with us, in that on every night we went out (which was most nights), we were getting to bed at going on midnight. And then had to deal with Jonathan waking up with the South African sun between 05h30 and 06h00. :yawn:

For the last week though, it was just Jonathan and me staying with my folks; and while I didn’t cure him of waking up early, I made sure I was in bed nice and early, so finally caught up on some sleep!

For everyone who has been asking how Jonathan travelled, the answer is ‘like a charm’. Both ways. The engine noise and vibrations just lulled him to sleep and he clearly had the most comfortable bed in the plane!

Some valuable lessons learned for travelling alone with a baby include:

• Don’t take more hand luggage for both of you than you can comfortably carry by yourself while also carrying the baby. And,
• Never expect the pushchair to be anywhere close to the door of the ‘plane on the other end. Even if the staff say that it will be. Plan around it being at the luggage carousel and you will not be caught unawares!

But travelling aside, we did have a lovely time catching up with family and friends. (Apologies to those of you who we missed or only saw briefly due to time constraints.) And even if Jon won’t remember it, there were plenty of people who were thrilled to meet him for the first time.

As for me, I have never appreciated more the complete absence of meal preparations, shopping and laundry!