Grant's surgery

When Grant was born, we were informed immediately of a birth defect he had. It wasn't one that was life threatening, but it was one that would need correct via surgery. While I am typically very open on my blog, I don't feel comfortable sharing what the defect was for the sake of Grant's privacy.

When he was three weeks old, we saw a specialist at Arkansas Children's Hospital to let him examine Grant and determine a course of action. We had to be there for an 8:45 appointment, 2.5 hours away, WITH A THREE WEEK OLD!

The doctor examined him and we made plans to have surgery the Thursday before Thanksgiving. Somewhere along the way, they called to reschedule twice and we decided to do it on Dec. 22. The main reason we wanted to do it around then was because he needed time at home to recover as he was going to be going home with something that daycare wasn't going to need to mess with, so we thought it was best to do the surgery while we had a school and work break anyway.

We left our big kids with their grandparents for a few days so that we didn't have to worry about them and could focus on Grant and poor Ava was SO sad and distraught when we left. She was acting funny and I couldn't figure out was wrong. She finally admitted she was upset about Gran't surgery and was worried about something happening to him.

We headed down to Little Rock Monday afternoon and stayed with our dear and generous friends Chuck and Chenin. Chenin and I went to college together and has remained one of my very best friends even though we don't see each other nearly enough (and usually when one of my kids is having surgery in little rock!;) ) We enjoyed the chance to catch up and it's so much more comfortable staying with them than in a hotel! Grant enjoyed it, too!

I woke him up at 2:45 so he could nurse one last time and then was able to give him pedialyte at 5:30. We had to be at the hospital at 6:30 and surgery was scheduled for 8:30.

He was in such a bubbly mood beforehand! We got admitted and set up in our pre-op room. There were people in and out and every time someone came in, he would pop his head up and smile at them.

We had to wait in there for a little over an hour and talked to all the people who needed to go over things with us. He got a little sleepy while we waited.

When the doctor came in, he said the nurse wanted him to ask if she could take Grant home? haha! When he left the room, he walked out and said "the answer is no." When it was time for Grant to be wheeled to the operating room, he rode down the halls like this:

His little head was perked up the entire ride and grinned at every single person we passed. Everyone oohed and ahhed over him like he was a little celebrity and he clearly enjoyed it!

We said goodbye to him and headed out to the waiting room. His surgery was scheduled for 3-4 hours and we got word about 8:50 that it had started. When it was over we had a consult with the doctor and then finally got back to him. He woke up pretty quickly from the anesthesia. He wouldn't latch on to nurse so we offered him a bottle and he started gobbling it down.

We got moved back to a post-op room fairly quickly where he proceeded to down almost 11 ounces! Thankfully he never had any issues with nausea. During his surgery, he had something called a caudle - they equated it to an epidural during birth and helped with pain and we were thankful he had that for the ride home. We got discharged around 1:00 and started home. He slept all the way home and did really good until the caudle started wearing off. Thankfully we had some pain meds for him.

He slept surprisingly well that night.

He actually woke up happy the next day and we managed the pain with alternating tylenol and motrin. 

He was happy to have his brother and sister come home, too!

The next night (and those thereafter) didn't go so well. He was in a lot of pain and we spent several nights holding him in the recliner. We have been able to cut way down on the tylenol and motrin. He has to go to his pediatrician on Tuesday to get something removed. We're grateful our ped was willing to do it so we don't have to make another trip to Little Rock. We'll have a follow up in 4-6 months with his surgeon to make sure everything has healed and held the way it needs to.

Thanks for your thoughts and prayers for our boy! We hope we are just about over this hump! We realized on the way home from Little Rock that this was the 3rd year out of 4 years that someone has had surgery over our Christmas break - me in 2012, Reed in 2013 and Grant in 2015. There was no surgery in 2014 but three of us were incredibly sick instead. Let's hope 2016 Christmas break is surgery and sickness free!!!! :)