Post-Op and Baby #3 updates

12:30 pm UPDATE

Harlie seems to be doing okay. She’s pretty much been asleep the entire time since surgery yesterday. She did wake up a little bit this morning and looked at me and signed “mama” and put her arms out wanting me to pick her up. She didn’t look too happy and when I went to pick her up realized that she was all sweaty. They had turned up her humidified air way too high. She does not like to be hot. So, I had them turn that down. She is on her normal trach collar, so off the vent, cpap and everything, which is great. They also took out the line in her neck (thankfully). Unfortunately, she’s still on oxygen and was breathing pretty hard this morning. I am still hoping that they will discharge her sometime today – or tonight even.

Yesterday the surgeon and his team came to check on her and he mentioned sending her to the floor today. Well, for those of you that don’t know, the floor is not a place for a trached child. Period. You get minimal help – they don’t even do diaper changes, they just bring the supplies. Keep in mind I only feel the way I do because Harlie has a trach. She has no way of alerting anyone that she needs anything. So, I said, in the nicest way possible, “Um, Dr. Lanning, if you send her to the floor, I’m just going to argue to take her home”. He laughed and said to the other people standing there, “Smart girl”. So, I think he was fine with that.

She’s still on IV pain meds and she’s certainly not back to herself. And they are a bit concerned about her work of breathing. So, they are sending pulmonary to come check on her. I feel confident that she’s completely fine. She’s probably just breathing a bit shallow because of the pain. Her incisions look great – already less red than yesterday. He did say that he gave her a lot of numbing shots in her belly area, so if she starts to bruise, don’t be alarmed.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention… after the surgery yesterday, the surgeon said it would have been next to impossible to perform the surgery laproscopically without the robot. Her liver is enlarged (due to her heart defects, the fluid backs up into the liver) so he couldn’t have done it and would have had to open her up. So, we definitely made the right decision in rescheduling so we could have the robot. That’s just nice to know.

Hopefully, she’ll start to feel better in the next several hours. We are trying Tylenol for now, to see if she can stay off the Morphine (to get her off the IV pain meds). She’s back on her normal feeding schedule. I just know that no matter what, she will feel better at home. It is very hard to get good rest in a hospital!

Oh, also, we had our 20 week ultrasound this morning. That went very well. Nothing of concern noted. Everything looks normal so far. We are very happy. He said he wants to see me again in eight weeks, which is great as far as our schedule goes. The only other hurdle I want to get over is checking my amniotic fluid level. At 23 weeks with Harlie I started to have too much fluid (which was because she was not able to swallow it like normal). So, if the next time we go and see normal fluid levels, I’ll really be able to rest easy.

The sonographer remembered us from Harlie’s pregnancy and she told me to enjoy this one, which I am. But, I will always have some concerns in the back of my mind, and there is nothing I can do about that. That only comes from my experience and anyone in my shoes would be the same way.

Oh, and no, we are not finding out the gender. I’m doing that for Tom so hopefully he’ll remember that for a long time and treat me really great. Gee, is our six year wedding anniversary coming up this summer???

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for checking in!
-Christy