Part 5, Surgery

I took my baby girl in to the hospital today to get tubes put in her ears. We had to get up at just past 5am for a show time of 6:15am. Lottie was tired but she was a great sport. She wasn't allowed to eat and I was worried about that because she is such a hungry girl all the time. But with all the craziness, she didn't start asking for food until a few minutes before they took her back. They didn't have a gown that was small enough and by the time we were waiting for surgery she had pulled it off and refused to put it on. Luckily the drs didn't have a problem with that! I got to ride in the bed with her all the way until they took her back for the actual surgery. I thought she might get worried about someone else taking her back, but she did really well and didn't fuss at all. They wheeled her back to me only about 15 minutes later. The procedure was super fast. She had a really hard time waking up from the anaesthesia, as they said she would. She was not able to stay still, thrashing about quite a bit, and was not wanting to be held. That was hard to see my baby struggling so much and not be able to rock her and calm her down. It took about 15 minutes for her to really get calmed down and open her eyes up. They wheeled us back to the recovery room and she fell asleep on my lap on the way there. It was so sweet to hold her. They wanted to let her sleep for a little while so I got to cuddle her for about 20 minutes before I had to wake her up. She woke up easily, ate a popsicle and then got super excited when I pulled out my bag of treats, graham crackers, fishy crackers, raisins and MARSHMALLOWS!! She ate the marshmallows first and fast. Those are a rare treat in our house. The doctor did meet with me for a moment. It was in the middle of the screaming and I was frazzled but I heard what I needed to. He said that the fluid in her ears was very thick (I don't know if that meant the fluid was dense, like syrupy or if he meant there was a thicker layer than he expected...) and instead of the originally thought 3-5 days of ear drops, he wants us to do 7 days! Otherwise he said she took the anaesthesia really well, didn't fuss, didn't move and the tubes went in easily. I was glad to hear that. So we left with two prescriptions and the promise of my daughter hearing better almost immediately. And we have a gazillion follow up appointments too (okay, only 4 with ENT, EDIS, Audiology and the Pediatrician, but it seems like a gazillion...) She took a really long nap- about 3.5 hours, and has been very happy all day. She usually is pretty cranky and fussy and will start crying at just about anything. So I suspect the fluid in her ears was causing more discomfort/pain than I understood. Although I had my doubts that this would fix the problem entirely, I'm starting to hope that this is the end of the struggles and that soon she'll be talking up a storm with her sisters!