We're home!

We are at home! It was so wonderful to sleep in our own beds last night! We got home around 7:30pm and were all asleep by 10:30pm. Riley slept until 4:30am and woke up to eat. After getting her incisions cleaned, she went back to sleep and slept until 9:30am! I truly cannot believe how well she has been resting.

Our experience at Children’s Hospital Boston was amazing. All of the staff were so nice and took excellent care of us. Of course Dr. Mulliken is great or we wouldn’t have even gone to Boston, but I’d like to mention all of the other wonderful other people we met. The staff in pre-op, holding and the waiting area were so nice. The chaplain came by in pre-op and prayed with us before we moved to holding. Riley’s anesthesiologist was super nice and caring. He explained how he would put her to sleep and relieved a lot of my anxieties about that. He even came back to talk with us in the waiting area after Riley woke up to tell us how great she did during surgery. Then he came back to check on Riley Friday morning to see how her night went and to make sure she was comfortable. I thought that he went above and beyond what a lot of other anesthesiologists do. Our day nurse Thursday and Friday was Valerie. She was great–checked on Riley often, and stayed on top of her pain medications. She was diligent in keeping the iced saline on the gauze to help reduce swelling. She loved our accents and called us her “Alabama family.” It never failed though, if she was in our room, they were paging her overhead to go to another room! Valerie made sure to tell us that Riley was “not normal–most babies don’t eat and cry a lot.” Riley ate like a champ and didn’t cry any more than she normally does at home. Our night nurse the first night was Loren and she had a student nurse, Colleen. They were awesome. They, too, checked on us often and stayed on top of Riley’s pain meds. They were diligent about keeping Riley’s incisions clean–something Dr. M is adamant about. Loren even offered to feed Riley for me at night so we wouldn’t have to get up (I didn’t let her but was so appreciative that she offered). Mary Anne was our nurse the second night and was great too. A doctor from the plastic surgery team came in Saturday morning and removed Riley’s nasal packing. Then Dr. M came by and sent us home! Needless to say that Brock was very excited about going home on Saturday as opposed to staying until Tuesday!

Riley’s repair is not complete. This was only the first stage. Dr. Mulliken performed a lip/nasal adhesion–meaning he only closed the white part of her lip and made her left nostril match the right. The red part of her lip is the same as before and will be corrected with the final reconstruction sometime between August and November. She has a Logan’s bow over her lip to protect it. It is simply taped to her face and the tape will come off on it’s own in the next week or two. Brock says it makes her look like a football player. Riley has to wear the elbow immobilizers (aka welcome sleeves, or no-nos) to keep her from touching her lip. She is supposed to wear them for the next 4 weeks. Her lip is still pretty swollen and I can’t wait for it to go down so I can see what she *really* looks like.

Thanks to everyone for thinking of us and praying for us. Our prayers have been answered once again. We couldn’t have asked for things to go any better or smoother!

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