We took Emily to NYU yesterday for the pre-admissions whirlwind which included interviews with the anesthesiologist, surgeon (in Em’s case, a surgical resident), pediatric physician’s assistant (I think), lab technician who took her blood, cleft team nurse practitioner and the team ENT.

A laughing Emily the day before our trip to NYU (don’t worry, she’s still laughing even after the long day)

We got to NYU 20 minutes late to our 11:00 appointment at pre-admissions and had to wait until 1:00 to be seen (we got stuck in traffic on the FDR). Ana was with us because our babysitting plans fell through. To make long story short, my mother got into a car accident on the way to babysit (the night before – she was going to sleep over). She’s fine, but the car flipped and rolled into a ditch and it’s not fine. So Ana came along for our very long day. There’s a park right in the NYU complex so Jim took Ana there (where she proceeded to get filthy) while I waited with Emily.

After some confusion about where we should be after we missed our appointment, I wolfed down a 5 minute lunch and Emily went through most of her appointments including getting blood drawn, which turned out to be much less of a big deal than I thought it would be. They need to take less blood for the palate surgery than for the lip, so it really only took a couple of minutes and it was from her finger tip. She weighs about 24 pounds! I think it’s more like 22-23 because she was fully dressed and wearing her diaper and she’s almost 29 inches long.

I met another family in the waiting room for pre-admissions testing. They’ve seen Emily’s blog and I gave them a Soft Sipp. Their baby is having lip surgery next week and he didn’t need to use the NAM because his cleft is a unilateral incomplete. He will look great (he’s already beautiful).

Ana had meltdown about 3:30 when the ENT was checking out Emily’s ears. Emily was a trooper, she actually fell asleep on my lap while Dr. Bernstein, the team ENT, peered into her ears and confirmed the need for tubes. He also confirmed a few suspicions that I’d had about fluid in the ears such as compromising her balance (she seems a bit wobbly when walking while holding onto things), causing discomfort when laying down (she still wakes up at night) and causing loss of appetite (she’s big, but it’s mostly from all the formula not solids). It bodes further research. I can’t believe I’ve never looked into side effects of fluid. I guess I was so focused on the cleft itself that it never occurred to me.

This post is getting long…I will follow-up with an update soon.

Emily will be 11 months old next week. It seems like she’s changing every day and turning into a toddler right in front of us. She can crawl FINALLY. She started really moving last week while I was away in Florida (of course I missed it). She also cut two teeth on the bottom last week even though I told her not to cut any teeth while I was away. Her fourth ear infection seems to be resolved. At least, she finished the antibiotics and hasn’t seemed uncomfortable. She’ll go for yet another follow up next week to be sure her ears are clear. Emily has an appointment at NYU at the end of the month to get a hearing test and do the pre-operative testing for her palate surgery. I’m looking forward to seeing the team again, but I am dreading the pre-op stuff because it means they’ll need to take blood. I had to hold her down for 15 minutes while they squeezed four vials of blood from her finger for her lip surgery. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. Palate surgery is April 19th at 7:30 am. We’ve all begun holding our collective breath and mentally preparing for this next step in Emily’s journey towards wholeness.

This is a classic Emily pose. She’s sitting in front of the t.v. and I had to make all sorts of strange noises to get her to look at me so I could snap her picture. She sits with her legs crossed all the time like a little adult.

Here she is cracking up because Ana’s rolling around with her in her toy area (the foot in front of Emily is Ana’s). They play together a lot. Ana told me that Emily’s going to be talking to her soon (I think she’s looking forward to having Emily as a constant playmate). Notice the very chubby knee. Emily has cleared 21 pounds and feels heavier every day!