Sophie's First Surgery

Sophie had her first surgery this morning. She had tubes put into her eardrums to help relieve the pain and pressure.

The hardest parts were the fasting and when they took her away from us to go to surgery. She got up at 4:30 this morning and would not go back to sleep or stop crying for a bottle. It was so hard, because she couldn't understand why we couldn't give her anything to drink. She was persistent in crying for one and kept trying to communicate in different ways what she wanted (the sign for milk, pointing to the kitchen, saying "ba", etc.). We put in a Baby Einstein video to distract her, and she finally went to sleep around 5:45. We're hoping that's our last sleepless night for awhile.

Her surgery was at the St. Luke's Surgery Center, and everyone was friendly and efficient there. We arrived at 7:10, filled out paperwork, went to a patient suite to put on her "scrubs" jammies, talk to the nurse, and wait for her surgery. Again, it was a little difficult to distract her from wanting a bottle or something to eat. They weighed her with her clothes and diaper on, and she weighed 20 lbs. 7 oz. This is less than she weighed naked at her one year appt., so she has lost a little weight the last couple weeks from not eating much.

When it was time for her surgery, I got to carry her partway there, then the nurse took her from me and sent BA and me to the waiting room. Sophie was wailing and fighting and holding her arms out to us. That was a sad part.

The Surgery Center provided a free Panera bagel to BA and me, and we didn't even have time to eat those before they were calling us into the conference room to visit with the surgeon. He told us everything went well, answered a couple questions, and then we went back to the suite. In a couple of minutes, the nurse brought Sophie to us. She was whimpering and whining, but not crying inconsolably like poor Peyton did after he had this surgery. I rocked her and fed her a bottle, and she was pretty darn happy to finally get to have her bottle. She was a little off and whiny until we got home. We fed her more bottle and put her in her rocker for a nap. After an hour and a half of napping, she woke up and acted just completely normal and happy - as if nothing had even happened.

She felt well enough to pee on her little potty and get every toy in her room out after her nap. She also got to play with her friend Libby at our house for a little while this afternoon. Hopefully she is just going to feel well and be happy from here on out.