Our Hershey Kiss

Well, we welcomed our sweet little bundle of joy into this world on January 12th. We had decided on a name.. It was going to be Avery Lynn. Back Story: Tommy had a sister who passed away 25 years ago and her name was Christine. I went to the hospital to be induced the morning of the 12th. Tommy's mother called and reminded us that the day we would welcome our sweet baby girl into this world, was the same day that they said goodbye to theirs. I knew immediately that our little girl would be Avery Christine.
Labor was well... labor. A little brutal at first but the miracle of an epideral made it a wonderful (but long) experience. They started the pitocin at 11 am and Avery was born at 8:17pm.
Now to the "Hershey Kiss" part of this post. As she was delivered we discovered that our daughter had a cleft palate. Boy did a gazillion different emotions run through my body.. but we can save that for another time :) Anyway... We call her our hershey kiss because...

.... her mouth is the shape of a hershey kiss :) 

Anyway, we went to the specialist today to learn what treatment will be like for her. At about 4 months they will repair her lip (and yes, Tommy and I are actually going to miss the hershey kiss). And then between 8 and 12 months they will repair the palate. Then we will be working with many different doctors for the next 15 years :/. I will be seeing a feeding specialist in the next few days and then we will have an appointment with a genetic doc and eventually an ENT (ear nose throat) doc. And when she is older if needed a speech therapist and orthodontist. Her cleft palate is VERY minor and we are very happy that with today's technology, this birth defect is one that can be corrected. 

Avery is such a blessing to our family. We are so lucky to have her and although there will be challenges we know we can get through them together. She has already brought our family closer together.

Sorry this is such a short post, I will do a longer one with more pictures later :)