Ineffective Taping

I am waiting for Elijah to wake up. He has been sleeping a lot today. I think he is recovering from 4 hours of doctor's appointments from yesterday. I need to shower, badly. But I know the second I get in the shower, he will wake up, so I am waiting until his next nap. I could be doing work or a million other things (apply for his SSN, taxes, cleaning, thank you notes that are 4 months overdue, etc) but I thought I would write a post instead. I am going to put random pics of Elijah throughout this post because, let's face it, I am smitten. 

Ok, he woke up...so this is written later. I thought I would mention our last trip was two weeks ago. Thank you crazy winter for another week off. Here is a picture I took of the tv while watching the weather one day. 

In case you missed that, it is a list of places with less snow than Indianapolis over the last 2.5 months. Yes, that does in fact say Anchorage, AK. This is why we missed again last week. The last trip to NY allowed Elijah and me to spend some quality time with my good friend Angela. She is in a community group with us, and her husband Joe is an internal medicine resident. He and Nate were in the same med school class. 

Elijah did really well on the drives and plane rides, but was a mess about halfway through his appointment. The combination of hunger and missed naps really hits hard at the clinic. Here is Angela dancing with Elijah to calm him down and distract him from his woes. 

 

She's so fun! We ate at the Turkish restaurant again. It's a toss up of wanting to try new places, but that place was delicious and I knew she enjoyed Turkish food. The appointment took a while, but I was happy when Dr. Olson and Dr. Grayson expressed their great pleasure at Elijah's progress. 

We got to see our baby friend Will who has a bilateral cleft lip and palate and his mom at the appointment. I love seeing them. His mom has encouraged me so much.  Will is about a month older than Elijah, and he just had his surgery last week. 

I will post about our appointments that we had yesterday some other time, but I wanted to show you our taping endeavors. Elijah's plate is held in by two tension tapes on his cheeks. They are steri-strips attached to a base tape on his cheeks one one side and attached to his plate by rubber bands on the other. 

The idea is that we would change the steri-strips every 1-2 days to keep the tension and the base tapes once a week. The base tape is a stronger adhesive so changing it less frequently would theoretically protect the skin on his cheeks. However, the last month (or maybe more) has been a battle. Elijah had discovered his hands which is hilarious. 

But this means he is able to rub off and pull off his tape. In particular, we have had the most trouble with the tape on his left cheek. We pretty much change it daily now. Or rather, we replace it daily after he has rubbed it off. All this action in his cheeks has caused a lot of irritation. 

 

Poor thing. We have a gazillion cream and ointment samples from the pediatrician, so we are working on it, but I have a feeling (and from what I have heard from other moms) that we are just going to have to deal with this until done taping. 

The other tape is the one that goes on the center piece of lip (prolabium). That one is not as critical, but I just mention it because it also comes off daily. All this means, I spend a lot of time making his tapes. It is akin to very-tedious-and-not-so-fun arts and crafts time. I usually wait until Elijah is in bed and Nate's on call to make a batch. I will put on a movie and get to work. Here's a visual:

After about 2.5 hours, I made what I thought was a week and a half's worth of tapes (which the cheek tapes only lasted 5 days due to the frequency of tapes coming off). Here is a shot of his changing table where we usually put on his new tapes. 

Those are all the failed tapes from the last couple of days (not pictured are all the prolabium tapes). Also pictures are two band aids from his legs from his vaccinations yesterday. I should really clean up that spot. :) Please don't judge. 

All this tape stuff is a pain. Yes, I complain a lot about taping. But I feel like it is spiritually how I operate. I try to hold the broken pieces of myself together with these little pieces of tape. I patch things up here and there. Nothing truly holds together.  Either the tape falls off when it loses adhesiveness (aka- the natural forces of life take a toll and break down my self-made attempts to hold myself together), or I pull it off myself (aka-I get tired of the facade of holding it together and quit trying). The latter can be good or bad. Bad when I give up and let myself spiral in self pity and running from my true healer. Good when I give up and turn to the One Who Sustains. Today, it's not the good way. Just being honest. 

I know all is not lost though even when I am in this place. I know He is calling me back to seek healing and restoration in hkm. I can feel it. I know he is steadfast and faithful to me though I am fickle and ungrateful. 

He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. (Psalm 23:3 ESV)

I will end with more picture of Elijah. 

My sweet college friends who came to meet Elijah last month. You may remember Christen (far left) who is pregnant with a sweet baby girl that I hope Elijah will marry one day. Next to me is Katherine, my college roommate and then Anna Leigh. Love these girls. Actually Katherine was going to go on a trip with us to NY that got cancelled because of NYC's crazy winter weather.