Part 4 - A Year in Holland - Boston Children's Hospital

A brief recap of where we are in the story: I'm 35 years old, with two young kids, and 23 weeks pregnant with a baby boy who is going to be born with a craniofacial birth defect.

After getting the results of our MRI, it was time to head over to Children's Hospital to meet our surgical team. The funny thing was, everyone at Beth Israel hospital acted like meeting a surgical team at Children's was a very normal part of pregnancy. It was all very matter-of-fact for them, meanwhile, Jamie and I felt like we were living someone else's life. What were we doing here? How did we get here?

Up to this point, the only surgery I had any experience with was having my wisdom teeth out when I was 17. My baby wasn't even here yet and I was meeting with a surgical team? Unthinkable, yet, there we were.

If you've ever been to Children's Hospital, you know what a completely humbling experience it is just walking through the front door. There are all these children, these adorable, gorgeous, little miracles, everywhere you look and they are all going through something out of the ordinary else they wouldn't be there. Many of them are dealing with things none of us have ever dealt with, or will ever deal with, in our lifetime. Yet, they are still children. Smiling, playing, laughing, looking at the fish tank, holding a balloon... My heart and my eyes fill up every time I go there, still, and I've been there more times than I can count now.

While we sat in the waiting area of the Plastics division of the hospital, waiting our turn to meet Dr. Mulliken, I wondered what people were thinking when they looked at me with my big pregnant belly. Were they blaming me? Were they pitying me? I know, now, they were thinking none of those things but that wasn't the first or last time I had those thoughts during my pregnancy.

We sat in the waiting room for TWO hours waiting to see Dr. Mulliken. Jamie was stressed about the kids and traffic, I was tired and hungry and just wanted to go home, when this cute little Hispanic girl came in with her Dad and big brother. She looked to be about a year old. She was tiny! She had two little piggy tails on top of her head and she had on the absolute smallest Reebok sneakers I have ever seen! She was sitting in a stroller and as I was looking at her, I noticed the tiniest scar on her lip. This was one of Dr. Mulliken's patients! This beautiful little girl was born with a cleft and here she is, repaired and gorgeous! I couldn't help but smile at her and I couldn't take my eyes off her.

Finally they called us into a room. They gave us some reading material and then had us watch a 20 minute video about cleft lip and cleft palate, featuring cleft-affected children and families - patients of Dr. Mulliken. Jamie and I watched the video in silence. When it was over, Dottie, Dr. Mulliken's head nurse, and Dr. Mulliken himself came into the room. They asked us what we thought of the video. We looked at each other, kind of shrugged, and said something very benign like "it was fine."

They said, "Well, weren't you moved?" The correct answer, of course, was Yes.

"Um, not really." I told you hormones are a bitch, right?

After making a sparkling first impression with our future surgeon, we then began to talk about what our future holds. Dr. Mulliken went into lots of technical detail, giving us a timeline of what would happen when, after the baby was born. It was like drinking from a fire hose, we couldn't really process it all. Then he shook our hands and told us he'd see us after the baby was born. Nurse Dottie stayed behind and talked with us more and asked us if we had any questions. We talked about feeding and she showed us the Medela special needs bottle nipple that was designed for cleft-affected children, while explaining all the different scenarios and obstacles we might face trying to feed our son. Again, we were overwhelmed.

We left Children's Hospital with a bunch of paperwork, a $20 Medela bottle nipple, instructions to call Dottie when the baby is born, and an entirely new perspective on raising children, parenting, and life.

(part 5 coming soon..)