No time wasted

Much to my surprise, we have a date...even more surprising, it is SOON. Judah will have his lip repair on January 27th. I am as excited as I can be considering the circumstances, but a little freaked out because this got real, really quickly.
Our day at Birmingham went really well. I was very impressed by everything about the hospital and the cleft team. We saw audiology first, and I gave them Judah's history. They will put in tubes during his lip repair and he will have another hearing test after his surgery. We saw the feeding specialist next and let her know he is doing fine.
Then Dr. Grant, who will be performing the surgery, came in and I LOVED him. If you remember, the surgeon in Atlanta came in for less than 3 minutes and explained nothing. Dr. Grant spent a long time explaining everything about the lip repair and all the other procedures we can expect in the future. We have to be at the hospital at 5:45 AM for his surgery and he will be the first one of the day. The surgery should take 2 1/2 to 3 hours. They will take him back to the OR awake and give him gas to put him to sleep before they administer the anesthetic, that way Judah will never know where it came from. A nurse will call us about halfway through and let us know how he is doing. After the surgery they will remove the breathing tube and Dr. Grant will stay with him until he is stable. Then he will come and get Micah and I so we can see him. We will stay overnight and then go home the next day.
We talked about the Latham and he said that he was totally against it and thinks it does more harm than good, beyond the fact that if he was going to get it he should have already. He said the Latham restricts the upper jaw from growing properly and the lower jaw would continue at a normal rate, giving you a 'bulldog' appearance, which he said is 'good for dogs, but not so good when you're a kid'. Again, I told him I am SO OK with not doing that. I was dreading it and am so thankful we do not have to put Judah through that!
His palate will be repaired at 10 months. Once his lip repair is done, it will begin to shift his gumline and will continue to do so until he is 8 years old, when he will have a bone graft to fuse the two parts together. He may have revisions of his lip and nose, based on need. Once his baby teeth start falling out we will see an orthodontist team who will determine whether he has substantial bone for adult teeth to attach to. If he doesn't he will have other bone grafts, and they will form a plan to get his teeth where they need to be.
We also saw another genetics team. They really scared me because after physically checking him out they said they will do a blood test to scan for a variety of genetic disorders. I asked if he saw something that was a 'red flag' because Atlanta didn't ever mention further genetic testing. He said he didn't, and that if he had he would tell me. He said it is just a precautionary measure to cover our bases and make absolutely sure that the cleft is isolated. It will take about 2-3 months for the results to come back, and I am trying not to worry about it. He said that Judah looked perfect and he was almost positive the test would come back negative, and that if I spend time worrying I'd be doing it for nothing.
We got all of his pre-op stuff done today, met with anesthesia to fill out that paperwork, and the ENT will see him the day of surgery for the tubes...so no running back and forth like we would have in Atlanta. I am so impressed because after 2 months of messing around with Atlanta we had no definitive answers and no timeline for surgery. Within two DAYS with Birmingham we have everything in order and are ready to go! I am so thankful that we are going to have his surgery there and that everything fell into place when it did. They normally do the lip repair at 3 months, and he will be 3 months and 3 days when he has his surgery...So even though it seems we spent a lot of time with Atlanta, we actually didn't lose anything at all, and gained a lot more.
So, in just 15 days my sweet boy will have his first surgery. I plan on spending those days living in a bubble because if he gets sick then we would have to cancel his surgery and wait 4-6 weeks before we could schedule another one. I am also going to be taking sooooo many videos and pictures so I can always remember his precious wide smile. Most people only get one first smile, and we are lucky enough to have two to fall in love with.