Our First Cleft Team Appointment

Today was our first visit to the cleft team for Max to be evaluated. This might be a wierd way to describe it, but overall I would say it was fun. We got there about 7:45, right on time. As soon as we had checked in two other families with children from China (both boys) came in. One of these families I had actually met online prior to bringing home Max. Their son is just a little bit older than Max, but has already been home for over a year. The other family just got back from China LAST NIGHT! Crazy. I definitely would not have been up for this appointment the day after getting home. There was also another family that came in a bit later with a daughter they had adopted from China. She's Ellie's age almost exactly and had been home just over two years. I always love meeting other adoptive families, especially those who have adopted from China, especially those whose kids are cleft affected, and especially boys Max's age who live in the vicinity and might be up for play dates in the future. There wasn't much time for visiting though. They kept us very busy. We were there for about three and a half hours and during that time saw an audiologist, dentist, nutritionist, speech therapist, social worker, plastic surgeon, and ENT. The ENT is my former fellowship director's wife so that was another fun visit. Aside from the fun and visiting it was also an informative visit. We confirmed the date for Max's palate repair (October 20th) and the date for his pre-op history and physical (September 23rd). We also determined that he has mild hearing loss from fluid build up in his ears so we added ear tubes onto his palate surgery. We also found out more about his post-op diet which is one of my big worries about the surgery. Max loves to eat and wants food constantly and we knew his diet would be restricted post-op. I had thought it was for 4-6 weeks, but we found out that it's straight liquids for 1 week and then soft foods for 2 more weeks. That seems much more doable. I'm now ready to get this show on the road and get this surgery done with. It's a big one to get under our belts and I'm hoping that in the year following we'll see some big jumps in his speech.