Since the babies are 3 1/2 months old now, it seems like a good time for an update! And since they’ve basically stopped napping unless they’re in my lap, you get instagram pics. 🙂
Xander had surgery on mine and RaptorDad’s 11 year anniversary to repair a bilateral inguinal hernia. Basically, his intestines were not where they should be. In an effort to preserve poor Xander’s dignity, I’ll refrain from saying more but you can check wikipedia if you like. Basically, it went something like this.
Me: Um, can you come take a look at this?
RaptorDad: Yeah, I noticed that.
Me: !!!
We brought it up at their 2 month visit and the nurse practitioner agreed that it looked odd, said there was a possibility that it could be a hernia, and we should have an ultrasound to rule that out. You know, no big deal. 2 days later (Friday), I took Xander in to get his ultrasound BY HIMSELF! My parents (who are rockstars) gently suggested that asking my mom to come with me was insane and that I should instead leave Mia and Kate with them.
Xander didn’t quite know what to do with himself having the Moby all to himself! The ultrasound went quite well aside from Xander peeing all over himself while his diaper was off. That poor ultrasound tech. Mia peed on her too a few weeks ago when they were checking her hips. lol.
Then we went upstairs to get Xander’s blood drawn since the PICU mentioned that his iron was low and we should have it rechecked. At this point, I’m starting to wish there was a Dell Children’s Bingo card. I think I would be winning. For having generally quite healthy babies, I sure seem to be here a lot.
We got there at 12:35. (This is important later.) The dr’s office was supposed to have faxed over the orders for his blood draw, but they couldn’t find them/ they weren’t sent. Don’t know, don’t care. The end result is that we had to wait for the dr to refax them. Except that my dr’s office is closed from 12:30- 1:30 for lunch. ::sigh:: Xander and I waited in the waiting room and I thought to myself that, why yes, my mother is always right and I am glad that I’m not dealing with another hungry tired infant and a bored almost 6 year old.
Poor Xander. The first time they dug around for a while a couldn’t find a vein. Then they called in someone else to try. On the second attempt, she found a vein but it blew. At which point they told me that they were willing to attempt once more, but that it was up to me. Um, why is it up to me??? What do I know about this? I hate being put in that position. Obviously he needs to have his blood drawn or we wouldn’t be here. Can you do it or not! Third time was a charm and they got what they needed. Spoiler Alert: he has low iron.
We finally finished and went back to my mom’s for a bit. Xander’s pediatrician called us that afternoon to let us know that he NEEDED SURGERY! Are you kidding me?!? I’ve been known to have some major head in the sand moments, but it never occurred to me that he would need surgery. Not only that, but our appointment with the pediatric surgery group was Wednesday.
After meeting with the surgeon (BINGO!), he confirmed that Xander definitely had a hernia and that it definitely needed surgery. In 2 days. Y’all, 2 days is not long enough to freak out about my TINY 8 pounds and change baby needing surgery. We were also told that we would need to stay over night since they were going to have to put him under general anesthesia and they make the tiny babies stay overnight. Oh, and we had to be there at 5:45 AM. And he couldn’t eat after 1:45 AM. Oh boy. We went ahead and bought some disposable diapers for both babies. Xander had to be in them for 2 weeks to let his incision heal and I wasn’t interested in schlepping cloth diapers up to the children’s hospital for Mia. This is also when we discovered that poor Mia has no junk in her trunk.
We sent Raptor over to my parents’ house on Thursday evening and set our alarms for 1:15 to make sure we fed Xander. Except that we slept through the alarms. We woke up in a panic at 2:04 and had about 30 seconds to decide that yes, we were going to let him eat, but only for 5 minutes. I then panicked for the rest of the night that they were going to cancel his surgery, but it was no big deal. Like seriously no big deal.
We got to the children’s hospital at 5:45 as instructed and then waited to get the show on the road. Xander was not pleased when I fed his sister and not him.
They do the tiny babies first and Xander was the tiniest so they brought us room pretty quickly. The surgeon said that they were going to try to do the surgery with a spinal block (like with a c-section) instead of putting him under with a general, but that he would have to be calm. I laughed hysterically on the inside, but said that we were good with whatever they thought best.
Then came the time to hand him over at the doors that we couldn’t walk through. Y’all, I totally cried. And then I looked at Mia and said to myself, “at least it’s not brain surgery.” They said it would take about an hour so I sat there and tried to read while watching the minutes tick by. Luckily, their time estimation was spot on and they let me, Mia, and RaptorDad into recovery.
My little Xander! They let us in as he was waking up and I got to hold him and feed him pretty much right away. Everything went swimmingly and they were able to do it with the spinal! I was totally shocked that my, um, emotional boy was calm the whole time. There ended up being a hernia on both sides that they repaired; I guess it’s common with preemie boys. This makes me feel both glad that we made it to 37 weeks and they weren’t true preemies, and guilty that I didn’t make it to 38 where we might have been able to avoid this all together.
Since he didn’t have to go under general, they had us stay for the day, but discharged us in the afternoon instead of making us stay overnight. We went to my parents’ to pick up Kate a day earlier than planned and my mom insisted on RaptorDad and I taking an hour to go get some dinner since it was our anniversary.
Cue all kinds of mommy guilt, but sushi. Sushi y’all. A whole (literally) boatload of sushi. Yum. 🙂
Biggest shocker? Babies don’t get real pain meds, only tylonal. I thought that was some serious crap, but everyone assured me it would be fine. And in the end it was. We gave him his tylonal on a schedule for the first 24 hours and then we were able to stretch it out. Within a few days, he was totally back to normal. We went in for the follow up with the surgeon the following Wednesday and everything looked great!
The biggest pain was dealing with disposable diapers for 2 weeks. I know it seems like it would be less work, but he spits up so much that it’s not like we were doing any less laundry. Plus, it’s clear that I’m a disposable diaper newbie. I felt like they were always leaking.
I meant for this to be an update about both of them, but it’s already gotten quite long so I’ll save Mia’s update for Friday. 🙂