Lip Surgery

On Monday morning Noah went in for his lip/nose repair, ear tubes and Mic-Key g-tube button. We arrived at 9am and first met with Dr Ross, our plastic surgeon. After examining Noah he decided that he would likely not be able to do a full lip repair this surgery because his cleft was so wide and he is so tiny, but he would do a lip adhesion instead and the rest of the repair at a later date. We had to get one last picture while the nurse got Noah ready for surgery.

Noah went in to surgery at 10:45am for 3 hours and things went better than expected. Dr Ross was able to do a complete lip and nose repair, with a whole lot of stretching!! We were quite happy about this. Anesthesia was also able to take him off the ventilator right after surgery which was excellent.
We met Noah's new face for the first time in recovery room. It was a bit of a shock for a moment. He was very swollen and bloody. He had nasal stents in his nose to keep the cartilage in place as things heal and steri strips across his lip. I felt like we were looking at a stranger at first glance, but it didn't take long to fall in love with his new face.


Noah went to a monitored bed on CK3 and needed some oxygen overnight. We were able to start feeding him by g-tube Monday evening and he tolerated it great. He was pretty miserable and was definately missing his soother. He kept trying to suck his new lip, causing himself even more pain. But he got Tylenol and morphine which definately helped.

Tuesday morning the oxygen was taken off and Dr Ross decided that Noah was doing well enough to go home as long as his oxygen levels stayed good for the morning. But, true to Noah's style, he decided he needed to prolong his hospital stay and had a couple of desats (his O2 levels dropped for a few seconds). So he had to stay and be monitored another night. Today, he had another couple of desats and he also sneezed his nasal stent out on one side. So Dr Ross decided to remove the nasal stent completely as he thought they may be causing some breathing difficulty. He will be monitored overnight tonight and if no more desats, he will come home tomorrow.
Other than the desats, Noah is doing very well. He is learning to sleep without his soother, and with arm restraints. Today we got our first small tight smiles. He looks beautiful and we are in love with his "new" face!