Peanut had his cleft palate repair surgery a few weeks ago. I promised myself that I would try to blog about it if I could but once we got there, it was hard enough to find the time to look after Peanut and ourselves, never mind finding the time to use the internet. Since then, I've been procrastinating so I'm only now writing an update on how it's all gone. Let's see if my fuzzy mummy brain will let me remember any of the details...
We went up to Sydney the day before for a pre admission clinic. Peanut was weighed and measured and we talked to one of the anaesthesia peoples about how he went with his previous surgeries, any heart/lung problems, etc. He also had his blood taken, which he didn't like at all. Not surprising really, I don't think anyone likes having their blood taken. Unless they're particularly masochistic. Lucky for him, they did it really quickly and it was over before he really had much time to cry. We also talked to the cleft clinic nurse and she helped us organise accommodation at the Ronald McDonald house for the night, which was really nice. We were a two minute walk away from the hospital so it was easy to get there the next morning. No need to worry about Sydney traffic or car parking just before Peanut's surgery.
Peanut had to be at the hospital at 7:45am the next morning and miracle of all miracles, we were on time! We sat around in the day surgery admission waiting area and talked to another anaesthesiologist who would be looking after Peanut during his surgery, the plastic surgeon and a nursing student who was following Peanut's case. With all the talking and waiting, it was about 9:30 before Peanut actually went into surgery. Poor little fellow was getting quite cranky and irritable since he had to fast and hadn't eaten anything since 1am. I went in with him while they put him under and he was quite good at first. He just sort of held the mask and looked at it for the first few seconds but then he started getting distressed so they turned up the gas and put him under quickly. I was led out once he'd gone to sleep and off we went to wait.
We went back to Ronald McDonald house to clean up and check out since we would be staying on the ward with Peanut for the next couple of nights. It was good actually. We had to clean up our room and bathroom and put all the linen in the wash for the next occupants so that gave us something to do to keep us from stressing too much about what was happening with Peanut. The distraction lasted until we were finished and checked out. I was starting to get antsy though since it had been awhile and we'd been told it was actually an easier surgery than his lip repair. We went back to the hospital and I decided that I may as well go express milk while we waited so off we went to one of the feeding rooms. Of course, they had to buzz us halfway through my pumping session to tell us that Peanut was out in recovery waiting for us. That's always the way isn't it? Anyway, I finished up as quickly as I could and off we went to go see our little Peanut.
My first impression of him was that he looked better than he did after the first surgery. Of course, his appearance wasn't as drastically changed with this one. He had his lip pit removed from his bottom lip but other than that, everything else wasn't actually visible. He was laying on his side, sleeping off all the drugs and looking quite peaceful. There was another kid there in recovery who was about 8 or 9 maybe and neither of his parents had turned up to see him. So he was old enough to realise that his parents weren't there and that the nurses couldn't get in touch with either of them. Poor kid. I don't know what happened with him because we were moved down to the ward shortly after but I hope his parents turned up for him. I can't imagine what they were thinking, not being there for their kid while he was having surgery. I know I couldn't leave my sweet little Peanut to go through something like that all by himself.
Anyway, we ended up on the same ward, in exactly the same bay as we did for Peanut's first surgery. Talk about deja vu. Lots of familiar faces in the nursing staff and the same room that I used last time to express milk. We had one fold out bed by Peanut's bedside and a parent's room on the ward upstairs so that we could both stay in the hospital while Peanut was there. I stayed by the bedside and D stayed in the parent's room, which was much nicer. for one thing, he actually got a bed and some peace and quiet! But we figured that was probably the best thing to do since he would be driving home once Peanut was discharged. That and his snoring sounds like a chainsaw and I didn't want the rest of the patients and parents staying on the same ward to want to kill us by morning...
Peanut was on a morphine drip for the first night and I think that kept his pain under control since he really only woke up once the first night and that was because a nurse disturbed him to take his temperature. The next morning though, he was all puffy from all the fluids and he'd been scratching at his face all night and all morning. Apparently, that's one of the side effects of the morphine. I went off to pump again in another room and while I was gone, Peanut decided he'd had enough of the drip and kicked it out. Go Peanut! They decided not to put it back in since it would be more trouble than it's worth and he went onto oral meds instead. Now that he was off the drip, we could take him out of the ward and get some fresh air and we did. There's nothing like being cooped up in a hospital to make you appreciate the outside world. We went took Peanut out in his stroller at every opportunity. We were in hospital for two nights to make sure that Peanut was eating alright and taking his antibiotics properly. Once the nurses decided he was doing well enough to go home, they discharged us and off we went! Two nights on a fold out sofa was more than enough for me so I didn't question it. We left the hospital, did some shopping at Victoria's Basement and Westfield Parramatta and then we headed off home.
It was nice to get back home. We'd tidied the place up before we left but as soon as we got home and started unpacking, it was like a tornado had hit. Makes you wonder why we bothered tidying up though since it was just going to get messed up again...
Peanut has been recovering well. He had a few more doses of pain medication over the first week and had to take antibiotics and put up with us squirting water into his mouth after every feed to make sure no food was getting stuck in his stitches. Now we're coming up to 3 weeks post-op and he seems to be doing well. I can still see a few stitches and healing patches on the top of his mouth every now and then when he lets me get a glimpse into there. We've all got our fingers crossed that he continues to heal well and doesn't get any infections or anything. Now our next challenge is to get him breastfeeding. I dunno how that's going to work since he's never been able to breastfeed. He seems to think my boobs are toys that he can pinch and twist when I let my guard down rather than somewhere he can get milk from so I'm not sure how much success we'll have with that. But I've got to try nonetheless since I still have a milk supply and it would be a hell of a lot nicer than expressing every 2-3 hours.
Hmm, go the epic length post. Maybe I should have made the effort to update while we were in Sydney after all. If you've managed to make it this far without falling asleep, good on you. I'll try not to inflict anymore novel length posts on the readers that I haven't managed to scare off yet...
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