It's Been a Year...Part 1

It was one year ago today that we brought our little Miss Jenna home from the hospital, for the 2nd time.  April 10, 2010 we were released from Children's Mercy following her Frontal Orbital Advancement on April 6.  Read with me as I reminisce the events that lead up to April 6, that week and now.   HAHAHAHA, those of you that know me well just SIGHED a giant SIGH, so afraid that I will go on and on and on and on....and I might.  You can read this in 2 settings if you need to! 

 I just finished for the night and decided to give you fair warning.  

I didn't get to the end, so you will have to read it in 2 settings....or 3 or 4....

Jenna was born with Metopic Craniosynostosis, which is a fancy word for her plates in her head were fused together and they weren't supposed to be.  We had to get it fixed. Now, if you remember, my baby was a still a complete and utter beauty, even if she had a ridge down her forehead which daddy and I affectionately called her beak.  But that's another story.... 


See, absolutely BEAUTIFUL!! 

 From the start, the very early start, we thought maybe something was not quite right with that little forehead of hers. Within days, the nurses and doctors, bless you Yvonne for prepping us, started talking about craniosynostosis.  Well good grief, between dealing with a 6 week early punkin and all the drugs from the C-section and the whirlwind we call life, this new giant word sounded terrible and I just hoped and prayed they were wrong and she'd grow out of it. Well, Dr. McGinnis gave her just 3 short weeks to "grow out of it" before he referred us to Dr. Virender Singhal, plastic surgeon at Children's Mercy (let's just call it CMH for short, shall we?).   When I called their office, they were able to get us in July 24th, because of our "willingness" to go to the clinic at CM South.

We meet with these blessed souls when Jenna was just day shy of 2 months old. What we found was a very confident and skilled set of doctors, nurses, and staff.  These people do this all the time, this is their normal and they did all they could to make all this whole process as normal and non scary as possible.  At this appointment, we learned all about Jenna's birth defect, how they would fix it and her recovery.  We also learned they didn't want to do her surgery until she was EIGHT TO NINE MONTHS OLD!!!  And that is 8-9 months old from her due date, so 9-10 months old in real counting.  AND we were to call in JANUARY to schedule the surgery.  The wait, it was long. It was hard and painful and scary and odd all at the same time.  I had just waited 7.5 months for something big, now I had to wait another 7 months for another something big. It felt like an eternity, an ever looming date of "early spring" just tempting us with worry and fear.  Yes, I was praying.  And I was talking to others and learning all I could.  I made a new friend whose own baby had gone through this. I got to meet the miracle of Lilly Jane and (BARELY) see her 3 year old scar, the same one my sweet pea has now.  But I didn't receive peace until April 2.  The deacons in our church prayed over my Jenna, our Jenna.  They prayed for healing and God's infinite power and wisdom and I cried and cried and then when the vocal praying stopped, I still cried.  A special brother in Christ prayed with me a few moments later after I shared my ultimate fear, and then it was there....Peace. Peace that passes understanding, I had it like a wave in the ocean, just overwhelming and overtaking.  Remember, I didn't say God didn't give it til then, I said I didn't take it until then....

What were my worries, you wonder?  Or maybe you don't. Maybe you know.  Or thought you knew. My fears, as any parent's would be, were of anesthesia gone bad, freak accidents, those possibilities that are rare, uncommon but yet possible. Would her optic nerves be damaged?  Would her brain get bumped even though they assured us they were FAR from the brain?  (And really how far could one really be from the brain if you are changing the shape of a forehead?)  What if something goes wrong that I haven't even thought of??  And my worst fear, the one I couldn't speak but feared more than all of the above and prayed on fervently, my worst fear was that we would not get her back from that surgery.  I was so terrified to lose my baby.  For me, that surgery date, the unknown for so long, then that date of April 6, April 6, April 6...it was when my world would stop.  For my calendar, there was no April 7 or 8 or 9. I was so afraid of April 6 I couldn't see past it. 

So, April 6th came (and in case you didn't know, the 7th did too, praise the Lord:)  I won't say it was easy since I had his new found peace.  The peace made me a sane person (debatable by some, I know).  We got to the hospital super early that day, they did all kinds of vital checks that morning and my little sweetie just smiled and smiled through most of it. 


She is blissfully unaware of what is going on.  I asked - they would not give me drugs to make ME blissfully unaware!

 Soon all the vitals were taken, all the questions answered, and all the consent forms signed.  There was more praying and more crying, and then the moment no doctor or nurse can prepare you for, the moment of handing your precious baby over to the nurse for her surgery.  This was the HARDEST, MOST DIFFICULT thing I have ever done.  That moment when I had to hand over my Jenna to that nurse, really more that moment when that nurse pulled my sweet baby away from my tight secure mommy grip, oh my, I cannot describe enough the pain. I wasn't standing on my own, Eric was holding me up.  And our wonderful family behind us, supporting him and me, not a dry eye in the crowd, pushed us toward the elevator.  And then we waited...