Four days post surgery

It's been four days since Little One's surgery. To see her play and run around the house you'd never know she'd been through anything.  She is sleeping well, generally happy to have the drops put in her ears for her tubes....not so happy when it is time to take her pain medecine.  We look back at the pictures we didn't post right after her surgery and see how swollen her face was and how sore her mouth looked it is amazing how well she is healing.  She's eating more each day but drinking is almost nonexistent. Luckily we can "count" melted ice cream and thinned down pudding as liquids, but we scrutinize each wet diaper and keep track of what she is able to drink and eat. 

 She still likes watermelon which we chopped into tiny pieces and noodle soup so she's getting fluids with her food but we'd like to see her drinking. Everything we're giving her is the extra-sugar type - no 'no sugar added' apple sauce for her, and even the Carnation instant breakfast drinks to get her calories in.  Anything to motivate to put food in her mouth that is still so raw and sore. 

 We made the mistake of giving her a melted fruit juice bar that must have been really high in citric acid.  She began to point to corners of her mouth first that are sore from the device they used to hold her mouth open during surgery, and then she began to cry really hard and point to her mouth.  It all ended with her throwing up what little she did eat which we know had to really hurt coming back up.   Never occurred to us that our choice would cause her pain.  Then we began to think of the pain one gets when peeling an orange with a papercut, and realized that the whole inside of her mouth is filled with "papercuts".... so that has been at the forefront of our minds when we taste things before giving them to her.

It'll only be a three weeks and then it's back to her normal diet (I'm sure some Chinese crackers will be first on the menu).  In the meantime we are enjoying our time at home with our Little One.  She is having fun playing with her doctor kit which must take on new meaning now for her.  She is enjoying slurping up strawberry ice cream (her new favorite flavor.)  Meanwhile, Gabby had a great time over the weekend at the balloon festival in Forest Park.  Many thanks to Nana, Aunt Shannon and Uncle Scott for taking her so she could shock us all by climbing a rock wall!  Brave girl!

It will only hurt for a minute Mr. Panda...

Mmmmmm...ice cream

What's so funny?

Our daredevil Gabby!

We're home

The Hospital discharged us this morning and Lydia is doing great. She was eating mashed banana, yogurt and some scrambled eggs this morning and was back to charming all of the nurses. We were home by 11 am and Lydia was celebrating her freedom by charging around the house and getting into everything (more so than usual). She took a good nap this afternoon, we'd like her to be drinking more - I think we just need to find something with the right consistency.

And it's morning

It's morning already and we had a really good night. Around 10pm Lydia was going strong, happy and still watching Baby Einstein. We, however, were feeling the stress of the long day and needing to sleep. Finally we turned the TV off, turned off all the lights and told Little One 'Night Night' like we do every night. Lydia laid back and fell asleep without a peep.

The plan was for Rob to go home and get a good night's sleep, but that didn't happen, we both decided to stay the night with Kara on the less comfortable pull out chair. Lydia was only up during the night to get her Tylenol every 4 hours, other than that she slept great and was relatively happy.

This morning she woke up around 5:30 (but I think it was mostly one of the IV's beeping that woke us up), she was due for her meds at 4:30 so she slept longer. Most of her cries now seem more mad than pain, especially when the nurses start messing with her.

We're not 'done' yet but so far Lydia has been a trooper. So far Lydia been eating her mixture of milk and pudding and she has drank a little apple juice. Unless something else comes up I think we'll be sticking to the plan of going home sometime today.

Zzzzzzzz...

Ahhhh...we are finally sleeping!  After another dose of pain meds, Lydia was sitting up and began showing interest in the tv....so we put on one of the Baby Einstein dvds and in came the wonderful cleft team nurse with her 'magic' pudding treat (thinned out pudding with milk).  It worked wonders on Lydia who was not interested in eating any applesauce earlier.  She ate almost 6 ounces and soon with a full belly she laid back and fell asleep. :)

Just down the hallway is a pantry stocked with all sorts of puddings, ice cream and drinks so I can go there and get more soft items for Lydia to eat when the mood strikes.  Now time for us to get a bit of rest too....

Just trying to find what works...

After we got settled in the room, the nurses have been great explaining what we can do to keep Lydia comfortable.  The new pediatric tower is beautiful. One of the team brought by a stuffed duck just for Lydia and some Baby Einstein dvd's for us to watch if that will help soothe her.  When she becomes more active, they will bring by toys for her to play with....they do think of everything here.  We are so lucky to have such great facilities so close to home.  There is a Ronald McDonald house on the floor to get free snacks and drinks, we feel so fortunate knowing that we will be able to leave the hospital tomorrow with our Lydia, while other families deal with much greater obstacles with their children.

The drainage has slowed down, but Lydia couldn't get settled down in her bed so Rob and I have been taking turns rocking her.  During the surgery she had morphine and once in the room, they moved her to Tylenol with codeine.  It should have kicked in about 30-45 minutes after they gave it to her, but she just couldn't get comfortable and kept setting off the monitors because she was crying or moving so much.
The nurse decided to give her morphine again to help with the pain since the Tylenol didn't seem to be helping.  Rob came back from lunch and brought me something to eat, so we switched off and the new meds are working a bit, but we know she is still in pain because she is whimpering a lot. :(

So we are just taking it hour by hour, grateful for all the prayers and well wishes we are getting from friends and family.

Palate is done

We're in the pediatric ICU. The palate surgery went fine and Lydia is doing well. She has a lot of drainage from her mouth which we expected. Lydia was in recovery around 9am and we were called back there around 9:30. By 10:30 or so we headed up to the ICU. She's laying on Kara now trying to get as comfortable as possible.

Tubes are in

Little one has her ears done already, and is currently having the palate surgery.


We were up bright and early and at the hospital right at 6am. Lydia was charming everyone with smiles and waves and was in a very happy mood, blissfully unaware of what was coming her way. After we had checked-in, signed consents, etc the nurse came and gave her a syringe of something to 'calm her down' and it certainly did it's job! We had a drunken baby gooning at us. The only time she cried was when the nurse came to take her down to the operating room.


The ENT came in about 20 minutes later and told us that he was done, so now we wait for the palate surgeon to check-in with us.

Active before the meds...

Mellow after the meds...

Surgery on the 16th

Lydia's surgery is on September 16th - this Thursday! She has a slight cold and a little cough so we're hoping that the surgery will happen, but whatever is best for her is more important. Surgery is scheduled for 7am and she will have ear tubes put in first then her palate repair. The hospital said they have her down for 90 minutes total - so hopefully it'll be quick but we know it will not be painless :(

We'll have some long nights and plenty of crying, I'm sure, but the timing is so right. Lydia is really trying to talk, watching our mouths and trying to copy the sounds. She is saying 'no' clearly which is very cute.

We're planning on taking a laptop to the hospital and if they have wi-fi we'll post more (or at least that's the plan).