Steristripless

On Thanksgiving, the steristrip was peeling up around the edges again, so I trimmed it back a little more.  When I trimmed it along the bottom, we could finally see all the way across the bottom part of her upper lip.  I was seriously amazed at how smooth and seamless it looked!  When Zeus got home and I showed him, he was amazed too and kept saying, "Wow, did you see her LIP?" 

Well, yesterday the last of Mia's steristrip came off!  Okay, so it was helped along by my little turkey who rubbed at it and about gave mommy and daddy heart failure.  It was hanging by one little stitch and we decided that instead of waiting for her to grab hold of it and rip it away, possibly doing more damage, that we would try and gently remove it.  Luckily we were able to detach it from the stitch without having the  actual stitch come out.  Whew!

As you can imagine, we've snapped a FEW pictures.  :)

Who me?  Pull of the steristrip???  No, not me... pure innocence.  :)

It's still red and irritated, especially around the stitches.  The dark spots are stitches, and the larger spot on the right is the stitch the steristrip was hanging by.

They did a vertical incision underneath each nostril and then down towards her lip.

I looked over at Mia as she was playing this morning on her play mat.  This is the view I had, and had the strange thought, "My baby has a lip now."  Strange.  It's not like she never had a lip before, but it just struck me this morning that her upper lip is continuous now.  Wow.

Loving the play gym and STILL trying to pull everything into her mouth.

When all else fails, there's always the thumb - though she still has a death grip on the hanging butterfly mirror with her other hand.  Silly girl! 

...and as always, my super happy girl is rarely without a smile!

Mia's waking up from her nap, so gotta run.  She's dressed for the day now, so I'll have to try and get more pictures.  :)



Getting her "shop" on :)

Mia and I stopped by Ross today to pick out a baby gift for friends of ours who just had their first baby early Sunday morning.  They waited until the baby was born to find out what they were having - I don't know HOW they waited, I know I couldn't.  They had a beautiful little a girl, so we had fun going and picking out something pink for little Isabella.  :) 

Mia's not quite able to sit up on her own completely yet, but we are working on it now that she has more head control.  When we go to the store, if there are high seat belts on the cart, I put her in and buckle it up under her arm pits and it holds her up.  She loves being able to look around and seems to think it's cool that she can reach the bar across the front and occasionally on the side.  Luckily, the arm braces and seat belt combo keep her from leaning forward and trying to EAT the bars.  lol  So, today when we were at Ross, I buckled her into the shopping cart and she looked so dang cute and so flipping happy that I just had to take a picture with my cell phone.  Man I love this little girl!

My happy little shopper!

So we are 12 days post op now (including surgery day since it was in the morning).  We've trimmed the steristrip down and can now see a few stitches under her left nostril.  Apparently they made two horizontal incisions - one under each nostril and she has little black stitches there.  I'll try to get a picture soon.  There's still "stuff" in her nostrils.  I'm not sure if it's blood, ooze, slobber, mucous, milk, or a combination of all of the above. 

They are SO not lovely to look and I would SO like to mess with them and help them on their way out, but I'm worried that they are firmly attached to stitches and would hate to mess up anything, so am staying clear of them.  I worry a little that the nature of the scabs being so large might leave divots in her little skin and lip area when they finally do fall off.  I'm not sure if it's normal or if it's from when she bumped her face on Zeus's shirt a few hours after surgery.  I guess we'll have to wait and see. 

We will be done with arm restraints after Thursday and I'm surprised to say I have mixed feelings about it!  I thought I'd be SO glad to have them off and be done with them, but now suddenly I'm paranoid that once they are off, she will do damage to the surgery site.  She had just started sucking her thumb and I worry that she'll pull her cheek with her thumb and tear open her little lip.  I also worry that she'll somehow get a hold of the steristrip that's still attached over her middle lip area and rip it off, and in so doing rip out the stitches there.  I feel a conundrum approaching.  Do I leave them on a little longer until the steristrip comes off?  Do I leave them on PART of the day still or maybe put them on her only at night?  Ahhhhhhh!  I know that when I first take them off, I'll be watching her like a hawk.  Jeez, it nearly gives me indigestion just THINKING about worrying about it... 

Man, this mama stuff is hard business!  :)