Surgery Update

We survived Ellie's first surgery. Like I said before, we were pretty nervous about the whole starvation before surgery part of the day. The doctor said she could have formula until midnight, breast milk until 1:45am and Pedialyte until 3:35am. Nothing after that, though. Well, Artie was able to get 7 ounce down her at 10pm (go Daddy!). We gave her a bath and fed her formula at 11:30 (another 2 ounces---go Daddy, again!). At 1:15, Artie woke Ellie up and gave her 1.5 ounces of my milk. We decided not to wake her up for the Pedialyte, since she had never had it before. So, Artie went to bed. I told him I would stay with Ellie, in case she needed anything. Well. . . at 3:30am, Ellie starts screaming like we have never fed the child. Sooooo. . . I whip up a bottle of Pedialyte. Hindsight being 20/20, we probably should have exposed her to this product before. Ellie didn't know what to do with this substance in her mouth! It dripped out of her mouth as she continued to scream for a real meal. I was watching the clock begging her to take some of the Pedialyte and stopped promptly at 3:45. Then, I stuck her paci in her mouth and rocked her to sleep. Did I get to go back to sleep? Um, no! I had to get ready, since we had to leave the house at 5am.

We got to the hospital at 6am (after a stop at McDonalds!) and signed our life away on a million pieces of paper. Finally, they took us back to the pre-op area, which was a glass walled small room with a privacy curtain around the room. The nurse let Ellie pick out a toy to play with to remind her of her visit. Ummmm, not much there for a 3 month old. So, we picked out a sandbox kit, for us to bring to the beach with us. The anesthesiologist came in to do some pre-op stuff. After hearing that Ellie has acid reflux and spits up all the time, the doctor said that he might put her under via an IV and not the gas. As you probably figured, I was most concerned about her being under. But, the doctor assured us that she'd be fine. Ellie's plastic surgeon came in to check on her. He broke the news to us that we will probably need more surgery after this one, due to the location and size. That was not what we wanted to hear. After every doctor/nurse/PA in the hospital came by to see Ellie, the OR nurse came in to pick her up and carry her to the OR at 7:45am. Then, we were led to the post-op room. At 8:15am, the doctor came in to tell us the surgery went well. The frenulum has a Z cut with two stitches and looked like it would heal nicely. The hemangioma was bruised, due to the lasers and would be swollen for the next few days/week. They injected the hemangioma with steroids (Ellie should be able to now play professional baseball---ha ha!). The doctor said that we need to meet him in his office in 4-6 weeks to discuss "the next step", but if the hemangioma started growing, we needed to schedule another surgery ASAP. He mentioned possibly doing another surgery in 4 weeks. When Artie was feeding Ellie in the post-op room, we noticed she was bleeding on the outside corner of her eye. Evidently, the cornea cover to protect her eyes from the laser must have scratched the inner lid of her eye. But, this evening, that had healed.

The nurses came in to do our discharge instructions. She needs an oral antibiotic 4 times a day. We also have a gel to rub on the hemangioma. Due to the pain, she is on tylenol with codeine. It took us a while to get her to calm down in the post op room. So, I sung "You Are My Sunshine" about 30 times until she calmed down enough for us to put her in her car seat. She slept the entire way home and for about an hour afterwards. We have struggled all day to get her to eat. We are now at the point where are putting her milk/formula in an eyedropper. It appears that she can suck on her paci, but she doesn't seem to want to suck on her bottle. Artie just gave her my milk in a bottle, which she took (but not without a fight).

Right now, she is asleep (I guess codeine will do that to a girl!) We hope that she will be able to sleep off some of the pain of her frenulum and will feel better (and hungry) afterwards!

Thanks for all of your well wishes. We sure felt comforted today! Thanks for reading!