Ready for church

Hope you have a blessed Sunday!

Home Sweet Home !

The grass is high, the dogs are hungry, and the cat is mad. We're finally home and glad to be here!
I'm not 100% satisfied with the answers we received but we were told that the infection was caused by bacteria that is normally found in your mouth. The diagnosis was cellulitis which does not make sense to me at all but we're home with another week of antibiotics.
7/5, waiting for surgery:
7/6, after surgery7/8, resting
did someone say I can get out of here??

Still here

Reed seems to feel better and is ready for new scenery. We're waiting on lab results from the surgery to make sure the antibiotics are right. I'm ready to go home but I'd rather stay here until we can be sure that things are under control and there is no more infection.
Thanks for all the emails and phone calls, keeping in touch with everyone has helped us get through this!

Update

Reed is resting and we are hoping to be released in 24-36 hours. I made a trip to the hospital across the street last night and found out that I have a staph infection. I've been taking antibiotics for a few days for an infected spot on my left leg. It has gotten worse so I went over the the ER at 3 am while Reed and Tim were sleeping.
No matter how bad you feel or think your situation is; there is always someone with greater suffering. I haven't seen many children in the hospital because we've not been able to leave our room but I know there are many children and parents here with more serious health issues.
God has been so good to us and He is my strength. Have a blessed Monday!

Long day

Today has been a very long day. Reed was finally taken to surgery at 4:00 pm and was out of recovery and back in the room by 6:00. Dr R believes his body was rejecting the stitches and therefore created the infection. He said that this is very rare, 1 out of 400 cases. They had to open his lip and remove the stitches. He has gauze in the opening and this should come out in a day or so. No one knows how this will look when it heals but I'm only concerned about him getting well and not how he will look when this is over.

He is doing good now, eating jello and drinking juice.

God is good!

Surgery in the AM

We're back at Children's and Reed is scheduled for surgery in the morning (few hours from now). He just finally went to sleep a few minutes ago and has had a very hard night. We got here around 9:00 and they got us into a room in the ER pretty quick, but it took over an hour (and 3 people) to get his IV in. After he calmed down and we got settled into our room upstairs, we put in a movie and I held him until he was asleep. As I was putting him in bed I noticed a spot of blood on his hospital gown and Tim quickly turned on the light. His lip had ruptured and started to drain and his poor little mouth was covered with infection. We called the nurse and cleaned him up (as you can imagine this was painful). A little while later the Dr came back in to tell us the plan for tomorrow and also took 2 samples of the infection to send to the lab (I had to leave the room for this, a mama can only handle so much).
Please pray everything goes well tomorrow and that they are able to clean out all of the infection and close the wound.
Leaning on Him,
Tina

Happy Independence Day

I hope everyone has a great 4th and remembers to thank a solider today for our freedom~!

I'm very concerned about Reed's infection, it seems to be getting worse and not better. I'm going to wait until tomorrow and see how things look before making a decision about going back to the hospital.

Infected

This is not meant to gross anyone out so if you're squeamish just stop right here!

Saturday we went to Rachel's birthday party (Happy Birthday Rachel!!) at the park and had a great time. Sunday morning Reed seemed to not feel well and was pulling at his ears and being fussy. He was not running a fever but I could tell he was not his normal cheerful self.

Monday Tim took him to the ped. office to have them check out his ears and mouth (I thought it looked like he was getting thrush). The pediatrician asked about his lip and said that it might be infected. They sent us to a local surgeon to have it checked out and we were sent home around 1:00. Although I was not happy with that answer I went back to work and Tim took Reed home.

By the time I got home from work his lip looked like it had swollen even more. What's a new mom to do?? I emailed some pictures to my dear friends (thanks!!) and got the answer I knew in my heart........GO TO THE HOSPITAL NOW. So that's what we did. We threw some diapers and toys in a bag and started out on what was supposed to be a 2 hr drive to Children's Hospital. About 45 minutes into the trip we had car trouble and were delayed about an hour while Tim taped up a hole in the power steering line. We made it to the ER about 9:15 and the doctor came in to see us at 1:30 am and this is the part where I came very close to hitting the floor. Reed had just calmed down enough to fall asleep so the surgeon was able to get a good look at his mouth before deciding that it is indeed infected. He then started squeezing on Reed's incision site until his lip popped open and started to drain. The sight of my poor baby laying there in pain and being squeezed on and the smell from the drainage did me in. By this time I had picked Reed up off the bed and was trying to calm him down; I had to hand him to Tim and sit in the corner of the room because I knew I was about to pass out. The doctor was apologetic and said that he hated to cause Reed to be in pain but he had to find out how much infection was in his lip.

We were admitted around 2:30 and spent 2 nights in a very small room while Reed received antibiotics through an IV every 6 hours.

I feel like a bad mom but they told us not to clean his nose to make sure we did not pull on the sutures. He had so much drainage coming out of his nose it was just horrible.

Here's what it looks like today.
I'm still very concerned because the infection is now draining out of his lip where it is peeling. I pray the antibiotics keep working and the infection is completely gone soon.

Day 8

Everything looks good except Reed's nose won't stop bleeding. We made the mistake of cleaning it out and every day we would have to keep cleaning and wiping his nose. I finally called the doctor's office today and they said that we should not clean his nose at all. Leave the blood and sinus drainage alone! Oops, we didn't realize we were probably pulling on the sutures. Hopefully the bleeding will stop soon. As you can see from today's pictures he is still drooling a lot so we're changing clothes several times a day! Note to all you cleft mommy's- to- be.......leave the scabs alone until everything is healed and the sutures have dissolved :)

Day 4 and 5

My sweet boy looks so different. I didn't realize I would be so sad to see him change, I guess it's just because he looks like a little boy now and not my little baby anymore! Wow how time is flying by.

Day 4:

Day 5:

Happy Father's Day Tim, we love you!