Post Surgery

Hello, me lovelies.

 So sorry I haven’t written in a couple of weeks. As you can imagine, life has been a bit hectic.

I am overjoyed to report that David’s surgery went very, very well. We were happy and relieved to see him kicking and trying to roll over just a few hours after surgery (it would have been sooner, but he woke up so quickly after the operation that they had to sedate him again — he’s a feisty one, he is).

David, the day after his surgery.

The hospital was so overcrowded that we didn’t have a “real” patient room — we had to stay in a small recovery room and share a bathroom with the patient next door. It really wasn’t a bad experience, though. The nurses and medical staff were absolutely wonderful and really helped us sail through everything.

The surgery went so well that the doctors offered to let us go home after only one night instead of two. Being a bit nervous about taking home a baby with a giant incision down his back, I decided to stay the extra night. That turned out to be a good thing — David was allergic to the pain medicine they originally gave him and vomited all of it, so we needed a few extra hours to get that sorted. The second night David managed to kick out his iv (feisty!), which involved a few seconds of blood, drama, and Mommy trying not to pass out. But all in all things went incredibly well.

Last night we made a return trip to the hospital because I found some sort of fluid on David’s sleep sack after his nap, fluid that lined up with his incision. The neurosurgeon’s office urged us to go to the emergency room so David could be examined. The doctors and nurses thought the incision looked fine, but neurosurgery decided to admit David for overnight observation just in case. Any leakage from spinal surgery has the potential to be spinal fluid, which is a very bad thing to have leaking.

David got a clean bill of health this morning, and we got to come home. I felt kinda silly about taking him to the ER, but the doctors assured me that I did the right thing. We still don’t know if the fluid I saw was sweat, a leaky diaper, or a spinal leak that stopped, but I am thankful that David is healthy and happy. And hey, we did get to stay in a normal room last night, so I got the true children’s hospital experience. It was nice!

I do have some sadness and stress post-surgery. I’m really relieved that it is over, but the recovery is much harder than I thought it would be. Honestly, I was expecting a one- or two-inch incision that would be no big deal and a baby I could tote around to playgroups and activities after just a few days. David actually has a rather large, 5-inch incision, and he has several restrictions on his activities. We can’t lift him under his arms, give him a bath, send him to a church/Y nursery, or put him in his exersaucer for six weeks. We can’t lift his legs when changing his diaper; instead, we have to roll him over.

I’m sad for David that he had to endure such major surgery (although I am thankful it exists!), and I’m sad for Ian and me that we can’t quite resume our normal lives yet. I thought post-surgery life would be a stress-free time when I could resume an exercise routine, take the boys to play with friends, and explore our community. It’s just a few, short weeks in the grand scheme of things, but the restrictions hit me pretty hard because I wasn’t expecting them.

Anyway, that’s where we are right now. A bit isolated, a bit crazy, very tired, and very thankful.