Sunday, July 8, 2012

A tale of two tongues: the tongue reduction

The week leading up to Maaike's tongue reduction was over shadowed with nerves.  Every time I looked at her protruding sweetness I felt sad.  The surgery was a necessary evil in my eyes.  I want her to have everything our other kids have.  I don't want her to have to go through more dental surgeries and a possible jaw surgery, so of course we are going to do it, but I am sad to lose a piece of the girl we love so much.  I think my husband said it best. "Part of me selfishly wants her back the way she was, which was perfect to me." 


For the first time Maaike went back to surgery on time, even a bit early, but as always everything took longer than expected and our hour and a half wait turned into a nail biting 2 hours and 15 minutes.  Now I realize that in the scheme of things a tongue reduction is small potatoes to what some babies are going through, but on this day it felt very big to us.  When I finally got called back to see her the adrenalin powered me through the first ten minutes to get her calmed down and laying back in bed... and then I felt the blood drain from my face and I alerted the nurse as I lowered my self in a chair and I temporarily lost my hearing.  Thank goodness for apple juice.Here are her before and afters:




We stayed in the hospital for 6 days while she readjusted, fought fevers, and vomiting, and we all took a giant sigh of relief to be on the other side.





4 comments:

  1. I read your first post about Maaike's tongue in reader and couldn't comment. Your desire to do what's best for her brought tears to my eyes. I had to comment on this post! It looks like she's healing up well!

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  2. Wow, I havn't seen any pics yet. She looks so different. Wish we could see her in person.

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  3. I haven't checked in on you for a while. She looks so good! I hated every surgery my little one ever went through. Even a 15 minute one to have a prosthesis removed from her mouth. Every single one is hard. Good luck on everything! She really looks like she's doing amazing!

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