Clinic Visit

Wow, those people at Children's Mercy don't mess around. We met with the plastic surgeon, the nutritionist, the lactation specialist, the geneticist, a social worker, and the lady who gave Saoirse her newborn hearing screening (she passed).

The plastic surgeon was really super nice. He didn't find anything wrong with her palate and said that when she is older (4yrs min.) we could have her "incomplete cleft" lip fixed. They will want to see her on an annual basis from now on to check on her development.

The nutritionist and the lactation specialist worked with us the most. She seems to be doing much better at breastfeeding (at least while we were there). They said she was still in the very bottom range of where she needed to be weight wise but that at least we seem to be on the upswing. She weighed in at 6lbs. 11oz today. They want to hear back about her weight updates over the next few weeks.

The genetics guy asked alot of family history questions and then explained how cleft lips/palates happen although when he finished I still had no idea what he had just said. lol. (i'm incredibly tired these days and my brain is toast, but also he droned on and on and used big words. :D)

The social worker comes in to make sure families have access to all the resources they need. We ended up talking about our water birth because one of the other team members told her about it. We kept having to tell people that she was born at home when they asked questions about her birth and I guess it was interesting enough to chat about amongst themselves. It was funny having to explain the home birth and her name about 10 times.

I was just looking up cleft lip on Wikipedia and found an interesting tidbit. If it's true, she has a microform, which is the same thing as Joaquin Phoenix.

From Wikipedia:
A mild form of a cleft lip is a microform cleft. A microform cleft can appear as small as a little dent in the red part of the lip or look like a scar from the lip up to the nostril. In some cases muscle tissue in the lip underneath the scar is affected and might require reconstructive surgery. It is advised to have newborn infants with a microform cleft checked with a craniofacial team as soon as possible to determine the severeness of the cleft.

Anyway so we've got a pediatrician visit on Monday morning to check weight and another weight check with the home health nurse on Thursday.

That's all for now. g'nite.