12 years later

I can't believe it's been twelve years of work on Jacob's mouth for his cleft lip repair and the dental work that goes with it. He was born with an aborted cleft which means his lip was split but joined up again before he was born. There was such a little notch...I remember asking the doctor why we had to fix it, it didn't seem that bad to us. I guess it would've just gotten worse with age, so at 2 (most people fix them at 3 months) we had his lip repaired due to lack of insurance until then. It actually was better because there was more surface area for the doctor to work with and it turned out well. He had arm braces on so he wouldn't touch the sutures and Jay and I took turns sleeping in the recliner with him for a month because he had to sleep on his back (that's an advantage of doing it at 3 months, they can sleep in their car seat). Laying on top of him to put antibiotic ointment on his lip was fun because he squirmed a lot. But he got to drink chocolate milk while on a liquid diet for many days.
Then we moved onto bone graft surgery for the cleft a few years later that was in his gum line to help support the tooth that needed to come in there. His hip where they took the bone hurt more than his mouth.
We just went through his second set of braces and overlays on some of his front teeth to make canines look like incisors that were pulled.
Jacob's been to many doctors and dentists - I think about 5 orthodontists because we're at the U, but one awesome surgeon who is retired now which is too bad, he was great..He's given lots of blood and some spit (along with the rest of the family) for several studies he's in to find out the causes for this genetic and environmental birth defect. He's had cameras where most people don't all to help the cause. We are grateful he doesn't have speech or other problems.
The pictures above - one with Alex and Penny to celebrate their birthdays and he being done with his work. The other is with his last orthodontist that did his overlays. He is now taller than the last two who worked on him.
We are so grateful for all the great help we have gotten. We thank God he has provided the resources he has for us. We are excited to see how this has grown Jacob (he's a great patient)as a person and how God will use it for his glory in the future. And we're glad we're done we hope!