April 5th Is Over!

Distracting Charlotte from the fact that she hadn't had her sippy of milk or her breakfast with an Elmo DVD during the drive to the surgery center.

Just waking up. Forgive the grim look on Mommy's face. Mommy didn't think she was in the photo.

There's our little trooper! Awake and not yet aware that she couldn't suck her thumb. Hence, the crying had not yet commenced. (And the weird mommy angle is due to the fact that the pillows were arranged fora 2-year-old, not a 31-year-old. And, well, once again I didn't realize I was in the photo. Lovely.)

Well, the ear tubes insertion and adenoid removal were completed on Thursday. Despite looking forward to getting these procedures DONE, Chris and I found ourselves quite antsy last week as the big day got closer.

On the eve of Charlotte’s two small surgeries, I asked Chris if he was nervous.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, she’s gonna be so confused. And scared. And, well, you know . . .”

Oh, I knew. “You’re afraid of repeating her hospital experience, aren’t you?” (Charlotte was hospitalized for 4 days back when she was an almost-9-month-old. It was awful.)

“Well, yeah,” he said. “She’s just so little.”

I think that the hospital drama from 18 months ago was traumatic—literally—for all three of us. Fortunately, only two of us remember it. But I knew what Chris meant—there was some trigger-like aspect of these surgeries that kept taking us back to all that drama. I just couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was.

Anesthesia was the other big worry for us. Putting a 2-year-old all the way under seemed like a big deal.

So, April 5th dawned. Charlotte wasn’t allowed ANYTHING to eat or drink, so we got up super early to inhale some breakfast before she woke up. It seemed horribly mean to eat or drink in front of her, so we just avoided it. We were quite worried about the morning routine—this child lives for her morning sippy of milk. Eventually, she woke up, and in a last-minute act of parenting genius, I decided to totally screw with her routine in hopes that she’d forget that getting her milk comes next in the series of steps we go through to get her ready each day.

So, without even changing Charlotte’s diaper, I brought her into our room to watch cartoons in our bed. Well, this was quite the treat and it occupied her while we finished getting ready. In our room, I finally changed her diaper, got her dressed, and had her help me pick out shoes to wear. By then, Chris was ready to put her in the car, and once in, he hooked her up to headphones and a DVD player. Genius. It could not have gone more smoothly. She totally forgot about her milk. Chris and I might have high-fived.

At the surgery center, the receptionist perkily greeted us. “You must be Charlotte!” Oh my goodness, the staff and nurses were unbelievably awesome—so incredibly sweet, both to us and Charlotte. These folks are SO in the right line of work.

Charlotte fought putting on her hospital gown, but she eventually calmed. The nurse and anesthesiologist explained what would happen. An IV would be involved, and I felt my stomach drop. “When do you put in the IV?” I asked, thinking of the countless botched attempts 18 months ago on my little girl.

“After she’s under,” the nurse said.

Thank goodness. I was so relieved, I forgot to ask them to put it in her right arm (she sucks her left thumb). That caused a few problems later on.

One of us could go into the operating room while they put Charlotte under. Chris preferred not to, and I wanted to be there with her, so that worked out. I knew she’d be scared, and I wanted to make sure she knew I was there. So, I donned the gown and shower cap like a scene in Grey’s Anatomy, and I walked with Charlotte holding her hand, who also in her little gown, into the operating room.

My child stopped in the doorway of the operating room, which was pretty intimidating, even for Mommy. It was big and full of lots of people and equipment. Charlotte decided that she was not going any further. Something was amiss. She could just tell.

So, I had to carry her the rest of the way into the room and hoist her up onto the operating table, at which point the screaming and crying started. In earnest. She cried and cried. I held her hand and rubbed her arm, and a super sweet nurse rubbed her other arm—and mine too, because, well, Mommy was also in tears.

“Oh, you’re a fighter,” the anesthesiologist said, trying to keep the mask over Charlotte’s face as she screamed and cried and whipped her head from side to side. Fight she did. Eventually, she quieted, her eyes rolled back, and she did some small hiccup-y sobs. And she was out.

It was time for me to leave, so I sniffled my way into the hallway. “Do all the moms cry?” I asked yet another super sweet nurse.

“Only the good ones,” she answered, untying the ties of my gown behind me.

I joined Chris in the waiting room, cried a little more—just to get it all out—then tried to get some work done to distract myself. The procedures didn’t take too long at all. The doctor eventually came to us and said everything went really well.

“Actually,” he said, “the adenoid was covered in pus.”

“Charming,” I said. At least, that’s what I said in my head.

“She has quite an infection. She’s actually pretty sick right now,” the doctor continued.

Well. This was news to us.

“She hasn’t been acting differently?” he asked.

“Nope,” Chris said. “She’s a happy, active kid.” Heck, not even her pediatrician who cleared her for surgery detected anything wrong, and that dude is thorough.

The doctor nodded. “Well, her ears aren’t infected right now, so she’s probably not that uncomfortable. But it’s a good thing we removed the adenoid. It looks like it has probably caused a lot of her trouble.”

Phew. It’s nice to know you made the right medical decision for your child.

“In the meantime, we might have to step up her antibiotics. I’ll see her next week and we’ll see how everything looks. For now, just start with the [I can’t remember the name] prescription.”

Chris and I obediently nodded.

We also learned that Charlotte’s ears were full of fluid, which is of course connected to impaired hearing and delayed language development.

In short, everything seemed to add up pretty well. The infection wasn’t great news, but hey. Now that we all knew it was there, we could treat it.

So, we hung out for a while longer, then a nurse came to get us. “Charlotte will be waking up soon, and it’s best if you’re there when she does. She’ll cry and be disoriented, but don’t worry. That’s how they all wake up. She’s not in pain, just disoriented and scared.”

Well, Charlotte did indeed wake up. I could hear her crying and yelling, “Mommy! Mommy!” and when I turned the corner, she was sitting up in bed, distraught, with YET ANOTHER super sweet nurse who was rubbing her back and talking calmly to her.

The nurses immediately lowered the safety rail on the bed. “If you want, just climb right on in there, Mom,” a nurse said. Well, she didn’t have to tell me twice. I got into bed with her, and Charlotte nestled into my chest and immediately quieted. “Good,” said the nurse. “If she could even go to sleep for a couple minutes, that would be ideal.” I think it had to do with her vitals. Every little aspect of her was being measured and had a number, wavelength, or beep associated with it.

So, Charlotte slept snuggled against me for a small bit (which of course I loved, because any mommy of an active toddler knows that those sweet, still, snuggly moments are incredibly rare), and then she came to again. She wanted to suck her thumb but couldn’t, so she pulled her IV, which of course I couldn’t allow. So, she raised her hand in front of my face and, rather angrily, demanded, “OFF!”

Well, we couldn’t do that yet. So, she cried for a while. I tried to get her to suck on her right-hand fingers or thumb, but she wanted nothing to do with them. Sippy of water? No. Popsicle? Nope. All she wanted was that thumb.

Finally, the nurse was comfortable with the amount of whatever we needed from the IV, so she started taking it off. Because it bleeds pretty heavily upon removal, the nurse had to apply some heavy pressure to what was a pretty sensitive area. My poor girl screamed and screamed.

“Mommy! Mommy!”

“Sorry, sweetie,” I said, my heart breaking. “Just a bit longer, okay?”

“Daddy! Daddy!” she cried next, big crocodile tears streaming down her face.

“I’m here,” Chris said. “You’re doing really well, kiddo!”

“PAPA! PAPA!” Charlotte cried after that.

Admittedly, all three of us adults cracked up at that point. “She’s just going down the list, isn’t she?” the nurse said. “After all, you guys didn’t manage save her, did you?”

The IV removal was eventually done, so we just had to get Charlotte to drink or eat something. She refused. She cried. We waited. She screamed. We waited. FINALLY she drank a couple of good sips of water, and we were free to leave.

On the way home, we listened to the soundtrack from Beauty and the Beast while I sat in the backseat with Charlotte, successfully convincing her to eat two squeeze purees.

We took it easy the rest of the day, and Chris stayed home with her on Friday while I went to work. (Each day that I miss eats into my maternity leave come autumn.) The antibiotics seemed to be bugging her stomach, but she’s now almost done with them. Everything else seems good for now. She has a post-op appointment as well as another hearing test on Friday. I’m a tad nervous about the hearing test. I don’t know why.

In the meantime, I could be imagining it, but I think Charlotte’s speech is already improving. She loves to sing the beginning of the ABC song, and lo and behold what used to be “A, B, D, D, D” is now a crystal-clear “A, B, C, D, E.” For example.

Anyway, this post is too long (that’s what happens when I write them over the course of several days), so I need to wrap it up. In sum, all went well. We’re super grateful for the amazing, compassionate care our little girl received, the fact that the procedures seemed to be the wise choice, and the fact she pulled through so well.