My Yukky Few Days!

With the exception of Leah's wedding the last few days were horrible. I got something nasty on Friday night and was up all night throwing up. I was supposed to go to Leah's wedding on Saturday so Adam could clay pigeon shoot and I could relax with Leah, but I felt like I'd been hit by a bus! Adam was an angel and looked after Nicolas all day and I lay in bed and dozed and read a book (the next book by the guy who wrote The Kite Runner, and it's excellent!). The only good thing was I've lost all the weight I put on so far with Pumpkin! I know it will come back though, which is fine.

We went to the wedding on Sunday, but Nicolas wasn't feeling very well. He was a bit sick in the morning, but was fine the rest of the day. Then yesterday I took him for what I expected to be a routine first dental appointment. My sister-in-law Erin is making me into a good America Mom, because her rule is once they have their first tooth and they are a year old they need to go every six months. I'd booked him in to see a dentist at Scottish Rite, the hospital where all his referals and his surgery was done, as there seemed no point taking him to a regular dentist because I knew he'd have some complications when he was older.

However I wasn't prepared for what they told me. Cleft lip babies have 70% more tooth decay than babies without the cleft, so instead of cleaning his teeth daily with baby toothpaste, like I do now, I have to clean them three times a day with adult tooth paste. It's hard enough to do it once a day because I almost have to lie on top of him to restrain him, but they said his teeth are very clean and in excellent condition, so that made me feel a bit better.

It got worse... Aparently he has bone missing either side of the three top teeth he has already, so the dentist doesn't expect him to get anymore teeth at the top. There is a chance he may get his molars, but he's unlikely to get his canines. I never realised that without bone to hold the teeth they won't come down through the gum because they'd just float around with nothing to hold them. He may have teeth there, but they will only decend as far as the bone, so they will probably stay up in his gum. They will just leave his baby teeth alone and then will have to do a bone graft when he is six in the hope that they can make his big teeth come down. Bone grafts just sounded so major when I'd just been expecting a lip repair when he was older. The fact I was tired and hadn't eaten for several days, made me a bit more emotional and the news was harder to handle.

Because we were at the cranio-facial unit, they have everyone you need in the same area, so they got me to see a speech therapist while we were there. The news got even worse!! Nicolas' speech skills are at the level of an 8 month old but thankfully his receptive skills are on target. They then tested his hearing and found out that he has so much fluid in his ears that everything he hears will sound as if he's underwater - hence the reason he can't talk yet because he doesn't know what the sound should really be. We have to see an Ear, Nose & Throat specialist on Thursday to find out how we fix his ears. He's only ever had one cold and never an ear infection, so I never thought there would be anything wrong with his ears.

So all in all it was a pretty traumatic day yesterday! I may bitch about the cost of the American health system and the over medication, but when you really need something doing, it happens so quickly and they fix all the problems. I am now totally focussed on working harder with Nicolas on developing his speech. He's not well today, so he's not receptive to anything, but I know what he should be doing and so I just need to set aside more time to really focus on his words. He'll go back to the dentist and speech therapist in September, so I'm determined to show them results!

I'm not looking forward to my scan this afternoon because who knows what they will find. I know God has a plan and together Adam and I can get through anything. Without Adam I don't know what I'd do, he is always so calm and makes me feel so safe and I feel like can face anything as long as he's with me.