August 13th, 2016
Hello Everyone! I cannot believe that school is starting next week. This summer has flown by!! I am going to miss Sydney and Claire so much when school starts. Surgery went as planned and the doctor was very pleased how the surgery went. He said there was not any tension on the skin and everything went together great. Here is a picture after surgery. You can tell everything went together nicely!!
We found out our girl has a very high pain tolerance. Within hours of surgery she was ready to eat. She ate her entire lunch through a large syringe and was ready to head to the playroom after lunch. We went several times that first afternoon. Here is a picture from the playroom.
We had to spend the night in the hospital which was tough. Grace was very restless all night and we did not get much sleep. We were very happy to get to go home Tuesday mid-morning. Although all of the staff were great at Baptist the hospital is just not a fun place.
I had to take a break from writing the last post because we had such a rough week after surgery. We found out our sweet girl has a very high pain tolerance and did things that most kids would not do because of pain. We put Grace down for a nap on Wednesday and we think she put her fingers in her mouth. After waking up from her 30 minute nap we almost had a panic attack because she had pulled apart the entire left side of her mouth and never even cried. I immediately called the doctor and he calmed us down and said we need to do everything we can to keep the right side attached. We saw the doctor on Thursday and he sent us back to Baptist to get arm braces to put on her at night to keep her arms straight. Grace puts her index and middle fingers in her mouth at night to calm/soothe herself when she sleeps. It was just awful to put them on her after everything she has been through. She would just scream and scream when we put them on her and she also started waking up multiple times a night again. It was very tough to sit and listen to her scream. Also when she screamed you could see the skin pulling apart and there was nothing we could do to stop her crying except remove the braces and we could not do that. Saturday night was a very rough night and by Sunday she had pulled apart the right side as well and we are back to where we were before surgery. The crazy thing is she had 3 layers of stitches on both sides with 12-14 stitches on each side. Here are 2 pictures of her with the right side still attached.
Here she is with some of Sydney's school supplies. She loved getting into their bags of stuff and pulling everything out!
We are keeping the braces on her so that hopefully she will be use to them by the next surgery. We obviously have a lot of anxiety because of what happened with this one. It is hard to keep a 2 year old from throwing a fit and we are going to have to find a way to keep her from doing that for 2 weeks! The 2nd surgery was suppose to be 6-8 weeks after the first one. We meet with Dr. Glade on the 18th to come up with a plan for the next surgery. We spent most of the first week at home due to the exhaustion and no sleep.
The second week after surgery was still a lot of healing, but we were able to get out at the end of the week a few times. Grace had her first visit to Chuck-E-Cheese and had a great time. She loved riding all of the rides!!
We also got out at the end of the week to celebrate my birthday!! It was so wonderful to celebrate this year with all 3 of my babies. We had a wonderful lunch with Lynnette, Harper and Henley and a wonderful family dinner at the lake. I feel beyond blessed with an amazing family and wonderful friends!! Here are a few pictures from the day!!
Grace had queso for the first time and she was so excited!! She kept pointing at it for more. John could barely give it to her fast enough!!
After dinner we went on a walk at the lake! It was a beautiful night!!
Here is a picture of Grace playing with her daddy! She is so happy!!
Starting week 3 after surgery we finally felt like we were getting back into a little bit of normal. We started the week of with a trip to Main Event. We have to do some fun stuff since it is our last full week off until school starts. Sydney and Claire had a great time and Grace had fun hanging out mostly waiting on her big sisters. She better get used to it because she is going to be doing that a lot over the next few years!!
That weekend we visited Mardel to get some gifts. Grace had a great time playing around in the kids area. She looked too cute in her dress!!
Grace also visited the playground at the mall! She loved running around and playing on the toys. She is getting more and more confident with everyday that she is with us!!
We are all in awe that we have been home for 7 weeks. We are so thankful that God showed off big and got us to China in June. We could not have done it with school being in session. John and I are so thankful that Grace got to spend so much time with her 2 big sisters. They have been absolutely amazing with her and she is blessed to call them her big sisters. They love her as much as she loves them. Please keep us in your prayers. That we can come up with a plan to make sure this next surgery is a success. We do not want to see her go through another surgery without a positive outcome. We know God has this and so again we are doing our best to trust him 100% with everything we have ahead of us!! Thank you to everyone for the visits, calls, texts and most importantly prayers!!
