Today we had our 6 month check up with his Cleft Palate Team at St. John’s.  It was a long morning for all of us!  Gavin was a champ though, as usual.  He knows that everyone wants to look in his ears, his mouth and listen to him talk so he gets through all of their requests with minimal fuss.

I packed a bag with books he needs to practice reading, his therapy homework to work on and his school project.  The Center had a volunteer dog that came to visit the kids and help to pass the time so in between playing with “Mike” the black Labrador we were able to work on our therapy and homework getting quite a bit done.  Daddy packed a snack bag so that got our little guy through lunch.

Not much has changed since our last check up.  There was discussion of having his frenulum clipped, again.  The speech pathologists believe it will give him more tongue movement and the team dentists believe that it will prevent the erosion of his gums behind his bottom teeth because of the constant pulling.  The frenulum is the soft tissue that is attached to the underside of his tongue.  His is fairly taut.  He can stick his tongue out but not very far and because of the tension there, the tip of his tongue is pulled back giving him a “lizard” tongue, which he thinks is kinda cool.  We do not want any unnecessary procedures so in the future should he need to have dental work done or another surgery then at that time they can clip the frenulum.  At this time though we are opting to simply wait.  His speech continues to improve so it’s not a “have to” situation.

His ears are still looking good with the one ear tube hanging on by a mere thread…still. For now we will continue on as planned with our reading and speech therapy.  His team will wait for his dental age to progress and then we will begin planning out his alveolar repair surgery.  Overall, it was a good check up and we got to visit with the nurses and he even got some playtime in with the other cleft affected kids there waiting on their team visits.

I appreciate these team visits that are uneventful.  Makes me less anxious and we know we have some time before we have to start worrying about the next big surgery.  In the meantime, we still have a lot of work to carry out but we are a work in progress and progress we are making!

tdowell22

I live in SoCal with my husband and two kids. Love reading, writing, being a foodie and coffee aficionado. I support other moms of cleft affected children. Our family is continuing along on this journey and we seek to help other families navigate terrain we've already covered. All Smiles is what we want for all cleft kiddos!