I have managed to sneak upstairs on the pretext of tidying up (pffft!) to come and update you on what is happening in our world.
The gavisgon seems to be working really well and we haven't had a choking fit since. H seems a lot more settled and we are a lot calmer.
We went to our first Happy Faces group in Warwick on 9th September which was fantastic. It was so nice to meet other parents and prospective parents and have a bit of a natter. Thank you so much to Jo for organising it. The the next meeting for Warwick is the 14th October and you can register here.
Next week H has his first appointment with the cleft clinic and his consultant, Ms Rorison, at Birmingham Children's Hospital. I will post an update after that.
Otherwise there isnt much to report, so I thought I would write about peoples reaction to H when they saw him for the first time. It was something I thought a lot about before he was born and I know from messages I have had from other people, that they worried too.
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One of the things I worried about when I found out that H had a cleft was the reaction of other people.
Before H arrived, we went for the 'loud and proud' method of notification. We told everyone who asked about me or the baby and everyone was amazingly supportive.
We looked for a way of informing our wider community. As odd as it sounds we didn't just want to put something on Facebook as we didn't want it to come across as attention seeking. I am aware how odd that is considering I am now blogging about it, but there you are. We found out that CLAPA were doing a sponsored walk in our area and that seemed to be a great idea. It would be good to raise money for a charity that would be doing a lot to support us over the next few years and to meet other families who had been affected by clefts. It also had the added bonus of being an excuse to put something on social media in the form of a 'Just Giving' link.
Our friends and family were incredibly supportive. The emails and messages I got from people were overwhelming and we raised an incredible amount for CLAPA. I almost felt guilty as we were, all told, going for a nice stroll around a lake followed by lunch. Hardly a trek up Kilimanjaro, but the money would go to a worthy cause so it didn't matter.
The day itself was lovely. We walked around Arrow Valley park in Redditch and were joined by our family, all in CLAPA t-shirts. There was a fantastic atmosphere and it was lovely to meet so many people.
New babies, as everyone knows, are people magnets and this is where the real worry lay for me. I had visions in my head of a nice old lady stopping me in the shop and asking to have a look, only to do a double take and stumble over her words as she tries not to say anything. I had visions of people looking shocked, or horrified, or shaking their head. From my, now rational, point of view I know how silly this sounds but at the time it was a real fear. If you are pregnant with a cleft baby and are reading this now, let me tell you that none of that has ever happened. People have been unfailingly polite, kind and positive about it.
The first person who saw H who didn't know was an elderly lady in the middle of M&S. It was almost exactly like the visions I had had while pregnant. I braced myself for the shock which never came. She simply said "Oh he has a hair lip, how soon do they operate on those nowadays?" That was it. Some people don't mention it, some ask if I mind them asking questions about it which I never do. Most people, though, are genuinely interested and caring.
A special mention must go to the two ladies who were in Aldi the last time that H had a choking fit. They saw me trying to clear his airway and came over to see if they could help. One began to tell me how her son had been sick a lot and asked if I was a first time mum. I think probably because of how panicked I looked. When I said I wasn't and explained about the cleft and how that made it more difficult to clear his airway they couldn't have been more helpful and lovely. I didn't get their names, but they really helped me be calm and rational when all I wanted to do was scream. Thank you
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