5,6, & 7 Months

So life is busy around here and I'm a little behind posting but we are doing great! Moving along just as normal as can be, except for eating baby food that is.  We have to eat our baby food from a bottle with a huge hole cut in the nipple because when we feed from a spoon it comes STRAIGHT out of his nose.  Bless his bones he gets really frustrated with it and starts sneezing and making these awful faces.  :( In the last few months he has started to roll back and forth from back to front and over again, at 6 months he started sitting up and now at 7 months he is trying to crawl !! He is a happy guy, unless he is sleepy or hungry and LOVES his big sisters. 

Our palate surgery will be in 3 months, on June 27th, and I can't wait.  We have struggled with ear infections, even after tubes, we've had 2, all related to the palate being open and when his palate is repaired he will be able to eat without anything coming out of his nose !!!

5 Months......

6 Months......

7 months.....

Heres a picture of his palate, its the only photo I have ever been able to take of it. 

You can see the problem it could cause since it opens up directly into his nose.  It deals us fits but this is what we do with baby food and as you can see by chunky monkey's legs he is not letting this palate stop him from eating. :)

The top picture is of a litle device Nonnie found, it has tiny holes cut in it so that he can hold it and we fill it full of baby food.  He sucks on it to his little hearts content.  This is great if we are going out to eat and need something to keep his little hands busy.  The second picture of the nipple is without a valve, its our pigeon nipple and bottle, so that its easy to squeeze if you need to just with a giant hole in the nipple.  We have absolutely worn out these nipples since these are the only ones he is able to use and as they get worn out the hole gets bigger.  We just start using them for baby food.  We currently have about 6 nipples we rotate in and out and wash and wash and WASH!!! Hopefully though we will be off the bottle soon and onto a sippy cup so we arent buying anymore pigeon bottles.  This seems to work for us really well so far with baby food though. 

He is FINALLY able to hold a paci in his mouth, after MANY months of having to hold it in while he sucked and sucked and sucked we are finger free !!! This is LIFE CHANGING if you have ever had a baby that had a cleft lip or palate you know just how life changing.  These are the kinds of things I have always taken for granted with my other babies.  Alex has taught me so much.  Being thankful is just one of the many things he has taught me, even in the small things.  So all of you cleft mommy and daddys out there, there is HOPE !!! We tried EVERY paci known to man and it wasn't the paci it was just that baby boy couldn't hold a suction in his mouth because of that old cleft.  Things are getting more normal around here every day.

And heres a few pictures one before and a few after just to show off  Dr. Grant's handy work and just how good GOD is, most people don't even realize anything was wrong anymore. 

First Photo

And BAM!! There he is, isn't it just amazing? We have the ability to make another life.  IT is the best experience ever.  Nothing will captivate you like the first heartbeat you hear of that precious angel you have concieved.  I was right at 10 weeks here, this is Alex's first photo.  We were so excited and hopeful for a baby boy !! We had to wait a few weeks to find out but Bart just KNEW he was getting a boy this time.

Fast forward to March, everything was going perfectly, no sickness, no problems AT ALL.  All of my pregnancies were great, I never had the first high BP or abnormal lab value or anything. I am a nurse and so sometimes that gives you the upper hand in things like ultrasounds.  Bart couldn't come to the hospital that day so I went alone and asked the US tech to seal the results of our gender in an envelope.  She did.  My neighbor was sweet enough to make us a box for the girls to open with balloons in it to tell us the gender.  So at this point no one knew but my neighbor, I dropped the envelope off with her on my way home from work because I knew if I took it home I would peek.  All of our family gathered excitedly to hear the news and when Brandy brought that box over we couldn't get it open fast enough.  We let the girls open it, and well now you all know the results.  IT WAS OUR BOY!!!! We (especially Bart) were SO excited.  FINALLY A SWEET BOY !!!! His eldest sister Ava Claire wasn't so happy, she told us she wanted a sister and she wasn't kidding.

I think in his first 3 months of life he had 4 ultrasounds, all different US techs, all missed the cleft.  Sometimes I think it was God's way of giving me piece of mind throughout the pregnancy, he knew best, he knew this momma would worry and fret and worry some more.  He knew I couldn't handle it so he helped protect our sanity, I am grateful.