A few weeks ago Mei Mei and I had an appointment at the cleft clinic. This was a whirlwind series of appointments where we cycled through and hit audiology, ENT, speech, the surgeon, a pediatrician, a dentist/ortho and even a social worker. Whew! Just writing that exhausts me! The good news is that they've gotten these clinics down to an exact science so things move smoothly and quickly.
There weren't any big surprises, but, as I was telling a friend recently, I still came home feeling a bit deflated. I
knew in my head, that Mei Mei was going to require more extensive medical interventions just because her cleft lip/palate was more severe than the Noodle's palate had been. But still. My heart hoped otherwise.
There's nothing that really needs to be done right now. The tubes that they put in last April, during her palate re-repair, are doing their thing and she has yet (knock on wood) to have any ear infections. The palate looks good and speech is coming along nicely.
Speech is coming along
so nicely, in fact, that she didn't end up qualifying for speech services though our local school district. I'll just insert here that I have
majorly mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, she has been making consistent progress and of course no one wants their kiddo on an IEP. However, I
was pretty certain that she'd qualify,
at least for speech/language, but I was obviously wrong.
All that being said, we are going to have her do private speech therapy. She's made such huge gains, especially considering that just a year ago she didn't speak any English, but she's still not where she should be. Much better to hit it hard during these early years!
There will be some more surgeries down the road, in a few years, and a mouth full of metal and other appliances in her future too. As my Mother-In-Law gently reminded me, it is important to just take things one step at a time and to remember that the Lord is going before us. There is no reason to fear--His plan is perfect and we can trust in that.
