After surgery

These are also in the wrong order...the first 3 pictures are from Soraya's second day in the hospital - she was already looking so much better! The last picture is from when they first brought her to me...looking pretty rough! The rest is just documentation for me of her surgery - so I won't forget any of it! It's seriously long (I would be very surprised if anyone actually read all of it) but I wanted to put it up while I can still remember all of the details. :)

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Soraya's cleft lip repair was scheduled for Friday, the 29th, at 8:20am, meaning we had to arrive at the hospital at 6:20am. Thursday night I could feed her for the last time at midnight...She couldn't hold out that long though, so I ended up feeding her at 11:15pm. I was allowed to give her "clear liquids" - water, apple juice, pedialyte - so I woke her up at 1:50am and gave her a few oz. of pedialyte and then again at 3:50am and gave her a few oz. of apple juice. I then got up again at 5:30 so I could pack all of our things since we had to check out of the hotel and leave for the hospital at 5:50am.


We arrive at the hospital and fill out papers, pay our co-pay for the hospital visit, and wait in the lobby until about 7:15. We finally get called back by the nurse and go to a room where Soraya has to be woken up so the nurse can check her out - listen to her heart, lungs, measure her and weigh her, etc. After she's cleared we're taken to a small room where we'll be waiting while Soraya's in surgery. Several nurses come in and out asking us the same questions many times (mostly when the last time she ate and had clear liquids was) and we meet Soraya's anesthesiologist, who says she will take care of her like one of her own. Dr. Burstein and his nurse assistant come in and talk to us about the surgery and tell us the surgery won't take long and I give the nurse Soraya's "lovey" and pacifier for when she wakes up from anesthesia.

A nurse comes and gives Soraya some medicine and we put her in the tiniest hospital gown I've ever seen.

Around 8:40am the nurse takes her back for surgery. First thing I do is pump since I'm about to burst and eat some breakfast. Sam is of course watching ESPN and the rest of our family is out in the lobby watching Adriana play with the toys. At 9:20am Dr. Burstein comes in the room and I think something is wrong since it's only been about 40 mins since they took her back. He says that she did great - only lost about 20 drops of blood. She's still asleep and they're going to monitor her before they take her to her room. We go out in the lobby to tell everyone she's out of surgery!

We find our room downstairs and meet our nurse tech, Geraldine, who tells us everything we'll need to know while we're there. After about 15-20 mins they roll a bed down the hall to our door and bring Soraya in wrapped in a blanket, wearing her "welcome sleeves" and hooked up to an IV and some other monitors. She's still asleep from the anesthesia and she's swollen, bruised and bloody. I sit and hold her for a few hours and every once in a while she'll cry and start thrashing (from the anesthesia) - she keeps trying to wake up. Sometime in the afternoon she starts waking up a little, so I decide to try nursing her. It's so awkward because of all the cords and arm braces and trying to be careful with her lip...she wanted to eat so bad but every time she tried she cried in pain. Dr. Burstein and his assistant came by to check on her and said she looked great - they reassured me that she would be fine if she didn't eat for a while.

Late afternoon Sam and I decided to walk around the hospital to get a break, so we took Adri and went to find a snack. When we got back about 30 mins later, there was a nurse hunched over Soraya - she had pulled out the IV in her hand and there was blood all over her hand and blanket. The nurse said the IV team would hopefully be there in about an hour to put a new IV in: the bad news was that she wouldn't have any pain meds for that hour (she was on morphine the whole first day) and it would be more painful going in this time around (she had kicked one out of her foot before surgery and they had already bruised her other hand trying to get one in that hand, so we were hoping it would go in her foot ok).

My mom and I went to find some chocolate at the gift shop and left Soraya with my dad and Sam...when we got back Soraya was having her IV put in her foot and thankfully the lady did a great job and Soraya didn't fuss at all. When 7pm came around and the shift changed, we got a great nurse for the night shift. She helped me try to nurse Soraya after her morphine kicked in, but when it didn't work she helped me feed her expressed milk with a syringe. She finally took some with the syringe I think around 9pm and then again around 11:30 before going to bed for the night.

Soraya surprised us by sleeping all night - from around midnight until 6am. She took more milk in the syringe so we were able to give her tylenol with codiene and get her off of the morphine. I had a really good nurse, Lillie, after our night shift nurse left us. Lillie was able to get Soraya to nurse around 8am - I was so happy we would be able to leave sometime that day and not have to stay another night. We finally got our discharge papers around 10:30am and waited for my parents to arrive with Adriana so we could make the 5 hr drive home.

After getting Soraya's medicine (tylenol with codiene and keflex, an antibiotic) and some lunch, we finally left around 2pm...Soraya slept for more than half of the trip and then fussed a little towards the end - we got home around 8:30pm and it was so good to be back!

Soraya's glue is almost all dissolved and I just see a few stitches still there - her nose is still a little bloody and she still has bruising... she's been so smiley and happy since Monday....She was so constipated from her medicine, but we're finally getting back to normal! It's good to have the surgery behind us and we go for our follow-up with Dr. Burstein Tues. the 23rd at 1:30. I'd love for him to say that it looks so good we won't have to repeat this in 4 years! We'll see. :)