A day I will not likely forget...

They say the second child makes things interesting.

I thought this was true from the start. Juggling two children's schedules, especially when one eat every 3 hours and gets sick afterward, is not an easy task. I don't know how people with several children do it...

But things got -really- interesting the Wednesday before last.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Caleb was going for the ultrasound to rule out Pyloric Stenosis as the reason he kept getting sick after pretty much every bottle. When they tried to make an appointment with the radiology place closest to our house they said the pediatrician was off for the entire month, so the next place that was relatively close was Johns Hopkins Hospital in downtown Baltimore. They had to see if our insurance would let us take him to the hospital for the ultrasound before they would schedule it. It turned out they said yes and there was an appointment made for Wednesday (9/7), early in the morning. I believe God had all of that happen for a reason.

That morning we got there and checked in on time, then they did the ultrasound. We were watching and thought everything was fine. They sent the images to the pediatrician to be reviewed, in another room. It was then that the curve ball came... the person who did the ultrasound came back and told us it was positive. We found out later that his pyloric muscle was -twice- the size it was suppose to be. They wouldn't let us leave the hospital, for fear they wouldn't be able to get hold of us if we left and surgery would need to be done either that day or the next.

Side note: This is why I think we were led to the hospital for the ultrasound. If it was anywhere else we would get to pick the hospital and we probably would have chosen another one.

They made us go to the children's ER for a while for him to get prepped while they were waiting for his food to digest and an OR to open up. He was going to be admitted, so they put an IV in and all that jazz. Those were some of the most miserable hours of my life. They wouldn't let us feed him because he would have to be sedated during the surgery. He kept crying and crying cause he was hungry and I felt horrible that I couldn't do anything for him. Thankfully after a little while he was sleeping most of the time and would only wake for a few minutes and cry when he felt a hunger pang.

After the ER, they took us up to his room where we waited for a couple more hours, then finally around 4pm they said they were coming to get him to take him to the OR. I say finally because we found out he had to have surgery around 9:45am and they came to get him around 4pm. When they came to get him, surprise, I would "get" to go back to the OR until they sedated him. They acted like they were doing me a favor... I really didn't want to go, but I just let them do as they wished.

They wheeled me, holding him, down these long boring hallways that seemed deserted and into the OR, which is nothing to write home about. I've never had surgery, so I've never seen the inside of an OR before. That it has to be one of the most uninteresting rooms in the entire hospital. They asked me about his medical history (all 6 weeks of it) and my pregnancy. All that fun random stuff... Then I met everyone that was going to be in the room during the surgery, more or less (cause there were about 15 people in there) and actually felt more at ease after doing so.

When we were in the ER, we found out that the Chief of Pediatric Surgery was going to be preforming the surgery. That was a huge blessing in and of itself. After I met everyone, they let me lay him on the table and give him a little kiss before I was escorted out of the room by one of the nurses. I went to the waiting room to get Joe and we went to get something to eat, since we hadn't eaten well all day.

While we were eating the receptionist from the waiting room called us and said "The surgeon wants to speak with you". The wording of the statement worried me until we actually met with him, a few minutes later and he told us everything went wonderfully. They went in Laparoscopically and they didn't have much bleeding, so that was great.

They let us go back to recovery about 10 minutes after he went in there. At that point Joe went home to get my things for staying overnight at the hospital. After a few minutes, they let me hold him. It was a wonderful time, knowing everything went well and things would be better from here on out. He did great in recovery, so they let us go back to the room after probably about 45 minutes.

Right before we went back to the room they told me he couldn't eat until midnight. My only thought was it was going to be a long evening, but the nurse said she had an order that said he could have some percocet if I was ok with it and that would help him to sleep most of the time, until midnight. Sounded like a plan to me, so that evening went pretty smoothly. He finally got to eat at midnight and promptly gulped down 2oz of pedialyte and to my surprise it all stayed down. He slept for 7 hours after that... He was apparently worn out.

When he woke up in the morning he gulped down 2oz of his formula and it all stayed down again. According to the nurse, once he kept down the second bottle we were free to go home when we wanted. I was less than thrilled by being woken up every couple hours by whoever was checking on him, so we came home around 10am. It was nice to be home and to get acclimated to things again. Elijah was so happy to see him, he ran up and gave both of us a hug.

Ever since, he's only gotten sick a few times. Twice the day after the surgery from the pyloric muscle being swollen from the surgery and twice from him gulping his bottles. This is a huge improvement from the daily changing of clothes, blankets and sheets and washing off several times a day. Hopefully this is a step in the right direction and things will finally not be so interesting around here. Although, I highly doubt it :o)

Until next time...