Recovering.

We are finally done and over with surgery #2. What a relief! I was not looking forward to this surgery at all. I thought that it would be harder on Matt and that recovery was going to be a bitch for him. He had ear tubes placed and his cleft palate was repaired the rest of the way. It's a good thing that the tubes were placed when they were because Matt was on the verge of a double ear infection. The ENT that placed the tubes said that he had a ton of middle ear fluid and there was a ton of inflammation in the tissue. Matt had started to pull on his ears a little bit on the way down for his surgery. Good timing I guess.
Dr. Hardy who is the plastic surgeon that did the repair said that he thinks that this should be Matt's last surgery. But we'll know for sure when we do a follow up in 4-6 weeks. I'm hoping a praying that this is the last one.

I looked in Matt's mouth after the surgery when he was crying, and he actually has a normal mouth. I was so happy for him! No more gaping hole in the roof of his mouth, no more tethered tongue. He'll actually be able to breath with his mouth shut. He was crying and I couldn't believe that he actually had some snot running out of his nose. I've never noticed it, but he's never had that. It's always just run into the back of his throat and not out.

Recovery has been hard, but it's much better than the first surgery. For his first, he couldn't even take a bottle and eat almost 48 hours after his surgery. This surgery, he was eating from his bottle a few hours after his surgery. And the first time around he was having a really hard time keeping his O2 levels up w/o the help of some oxygen. This time he had no problems, and his O2 levels were at or near 100% right after surgery. Sweet little boy. Again, we have the help of Lortab for Matt and use it when needed. There's no need for him to be in pain when he doesn't have to be.

He also surprisingly hit a milestone after his surgery. It was probably 8 hours or so afterwards. My mom was rubbing Matt's foot and he looked at her and started to point at her with his index finger. Then he found me and pointed at me. It was so cute! Here are some pictures of him the day after his surgery waiting to be released and playing with some toys.






I also forgot to mention that we have not one, but two teeth now! His first popped in the weekend before last, and his second came in a week after. He's growing up so fast.