Jojo's cleft palate surgery

Here is a letter from Cindy, James' mom aka Jojo. He had his cleft palate surgery postponed a few times and finally had it done. It is really hard because having them wear armbands is a really hard thing to do because they cannot put their hands in their mouths for three weeks hence the armbands. They cannot eat any hard food and have to go back to baby food. All of this is especially diificult as they get older. My question was if Jojo was eating a lot of ice cream. The first part was written soon after surgery and the second part a week later.

It's so funny that you should mention his love of ice cream. He had two big helpings of melted ice cream fed to him through a syringe today. They were certainly the highlights of his eating today and I am sure ice cream will be a part of his diet everyday for awhile. :) He is really doing very well, we are amazed. He sat on the floor for 40 minutes today and cut up a piece of paper. He has adapted very well to having his arms unbendable, in fact when we were changing his clothes today and had his arm restraints off, his sister Ellie asked if she could try them on her arms and Jojo was very possessive and got upset and wanted his arms restraints back on.

As far as our next step, post op appt. in 4 weeks and then we hope to start speech therapy as soon as possible. He really wants to talk so bad and he actually had mastered many words before surgery. (My Mom is sure she heard him say Grandma clearer today) :)

JoJo has adapted so well. It's been a week since surgery and he is eating lots of mashed potaoes, oatmeal, apple sauce, yogurt and melted ice cream. He entertains himself by playing with his cars and train set as well as watching his favorite movies (Thomas the train and Cars over and over again). It snowed here today, we got about 2 inches of really wet snow. We built a 'snow bunny'.

Life, Love and Laughter,

Amanda

Starfish Foster Home

http://chinesestarfish.blogspot.com/

http://www.chinesestarfish.org/