Dominic's New Face

Anyone who is facebook friends with me may already know that Dominic did in fact come home from the hospital on Friday. Not in the morning, mind you, but still on Friday. Sorry for the delay, but anyone that has been in the hospital for any length of time can at least understand that I just needed to take some time for me and my family once we were all back together again. I was happy he was home, glad for the great care he had while in hospital, but I was drained. So I postponed this post for a couple of days.

After Dominic puked that couple times on Thursday night, his nurses and I started talking about different reasons that it could have happened, not related to the g-button, that would not keep him in hospital. The three most hopeful and likely were that 1) he was coming off of his anesthetic and every person that goes through surgery with anesthetic is prescribed some kind of med while in hospital to chillax their stomachs. Dominic is no exception and had this given to him, which implies that the doctors at least slightly expected for him to get a bit sick. 2) He was going in to morphine withdrawal.  He had gotten a few hits of morphine for pain relief after his surgery. Not high doses or anything, but just the fact that he had been on morphine for SO long a few months back may have made him instantly dependent on it again. He was doing a bit of lip smacking and tongue sticking out, but that also could have just been him getting used to the feel of his new mouth. And my personal favourite 3) He hadn't pooped since the day before his surgery and he was so bunged up that he was trying to poop but it popped out the top rather than his bottom. We were trying to feed him, but there was no place for it to go. The poop is my favourite reason because shortly after puking, he had two BIG poops, and although we still waited to feed him a couple of hours, it wasn't a problem after that. The following morning, his new nurse told me that the plan was still to release him that day as long as the next two feeds (9am and 1pm) went fine. And they did. So Wahoo!! We are home!!

So meet Dominic with his new face!

It's really cool to see how they used the parts of his lips and mouth that were there to create his new lip. So, yes, his nub is still kinda there, but from a distance you wouldn't necessarily know, it kinda just looks like he had a bloody nose, and when he's all healed up I bet at first glance you wouldn't even notice.

He is back to his usual self now that we are home and he giggles and smiles, but the top part of his mouth, were his lip repair happened, does not move yet when he smiles and laughs. So he smiles with his eyes and his bottom lip, which is really cute, but makes him seem a little flat. I'm sure once the swelling goes down that will change and he will have a more normal smile, and normal control over his face, but I am just happy to see him smiling and giggling again. He has the arm bar thingies to keep him from putting his hands or anything in his mouth, because that may cause the stitching to tear (so he's not allowed his soother either), but he seems to be adjusting to these well. He just finds things to do other than suck on stuff... like playing with his toes. That's fun!

So we are back into the routine of being at home, but I have no intention of taking him anywhere that is not absolutely necessary, because putting Dom in a carseat right now is a huge process and a pain because of those arm bars. So come visit us if you are interested! Because I won't be coming to you for at least 2 weeks! ;)