Post-Surgery

Well, Sage had his cleft palate repair on Thursday at Maine Med and we were able to go home on Friday, which I was hoping for. It's always so impossible to sleep in the hospital. The worst thing is how stuffy it is! No fresh air is no good for me. Sage definitely isn't back to 100% yet, but he's having a better time now than he was at first! He can't have any solids at all for the next week or so, and I think he's getting sick of yogurt.

But the best thing about it all is that this is the last surgery he'll have until his permanent teeth come in--I can't even express how nice it is to know that the next time he has to have surgery we'll be able to explain it to him and he'll have an idea of what's coming. I always feel like we're tricking Sage with these surgeries because we can't tell him what's going to happen. And then after that one, he may just need some nose/lip touch-ups as his face grows. But as far as that goes, I'm going to leave it up to him--if it's purely cosmetic and doesn't affect functionality, I think he should decide. I would never want him to feel that he needs to look a certain way--I just want him to feel comfortable with who he is.

It's so weird--children born with clefts are often considered "special needs"--now that he's had the surgeries, that has kind of disappeared. I think a lot of people don't notice the little scar on his lip, the little flatness to the left side of his nose, and his teeth. He's just like any other kid.

Worth Pondering

(Cleft lip progression: Sage at a few weeks old, six months old, and 10 months old, a few months after surgery)

Actually, I realized after I finished that last post that I *do* have something to say and that is this: Today my husband was feeding Sage, and he was talking about Sage's past and upcoming surgeries. And he said that we were "un-perfecting what God made perfect." I have to admit that I've thought about that before. Certainly I wouldn't want Sage to go through life feeling Other and ostracized--but I think the way I'm planning to raise him, he probably would anyway. I always did.

I've settled on the conviction that if it were simply cosmetic, I don't think we would've gone through all of it. I think that would send a message that he is unacceptable as he is, which couldn't be further from the truth. But since these things affect his functioning (lip, palate, teeth) I think it's justifiable. I guess that's my little thing about acceptance and what God makes and all of that difficult stuff.