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Kolin surprised us all when he came nearly three weeks early! He was born on Tuesday, June 17, 2003 at 9:01 pm. He weighed 6 lbs 13 oz and was 20 inches long.
Kolin was born with an incomplete unilateral cleft lip. Cleft lip and palate is a common birth defect that affects 1 in 700 babies. We found out Kolin would have a cleft at our 20 week ultrasound. We were surprised and relieved at his birth when we saw that he had a mild cleft that only slightly affected the palate.
Kolin had his lip repair surgery when he was 10 weeks old, on August 27th, 2003. He had his first lip revision just after his second birthday. Kolin had his second lip revision surgery on August 2, 2006. He was under for about 4 hours. As usual, he came through like a trooper!
Kolin has a way of making extra tissue, so just when we think a surgery looks great, his body keeps changing the shape of the lip. Kolin has had 4 steroid injections to his scar over the past year. It has really helped with his keloiding problems. His lip still pulled up a bit and so Kolin was scheduled for another revision. Kolin's lip looked great when he wasn't smiling, very symmetrical. When he was animated, his lip became less symmetrical. The surgeon will attempt to correct this a bit.
Kolin had his third lip revision June 20, 2007. We had to stay overnight and weren't prepared for it! Kolin's lip had some unusual swelling, almost blister like, so the doctor thought it was wise for us to stay and have her check it in the morning. It turned out to be nothing serious and it went away by the morning. In this surgery the doctor loosened up the muscles under his left nostril and touched up the nostril as well. This time there seems to be less pulling up and the scar isn't raising so far! We're crossing our fingers that this will be the last revision for a while! We're keeping an eye on the scar and will do steroid injections again if it begins to keloid.
As far as we know, Kolin's hearing is great. Well...he does have a "selective" hearing problem meaning he only hears what HE wants to at times! He will see the Ear doctor soon to check out the status of the tubes. Hopefully, they are in and we won't need to replace them for a while.
We found out Kolin has one extra tooth that is coming down through his cleft gumline. Kolin has learned to sit still for the dentist and we finally got an xray of his mouth. Just as we suspected, he has an extra adult tooth waiting to come down where his extra baby tooth is. We aren't going to do anything with it until he gets much older. We want that tooth to stay in there to keep the bone in good shape. The tooth, however is totally throwing off his front teeth. His whole midline of his mouth is off center...which is pretty normal for kids with clefts. Once again, those are all issues we'll deal with in the years to come.
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