Bringing Rodney Home & Surgery

It’s taken a while to get this post up but I’m pretty sure that every other mother will back me up in saying that it takes a lot of effort to adjust to having a newborn at home, especially when the baby is such a preemie! On September 13^th after 52 days in the NICU we finally got to bring Rodney home! When we left the hospital he weighed 3 lbs 14 ounces. He was doing great but they still sent him home with an apnea monitor because he still had an occasional weird breathing spell, usually when he was eating.

Nolan and Rodney catching up on sleep

The first night we had him home we tried to have him sleep in the bassinet beside our bed. That only lasted about 2 hours before the monitor started blaring. Rodney was fine but one of the monitor leads had come loose. We put it back on and went back to sleep but it kept happening. Around 4 in the morning I grabbed the baby and the monitor and headed downstairs. Because of the stupid monitor and Nolan’s obligation to make an income the couch is where Rodney and I stayed for the next month except for the weekends. All I can say is thank goodness for bouncy chairs. Rodney loved his and slept great in it. I was so glad that we finally got to return the monitor but Rodney and I still stayed downstairs for another week or so while he needed fed every 3 hours.

Cute little man with his GIANT binkie!

Since then he’s had his doctor’s appointment where he had his first vaccinations. So sad! He did pretty well though. The doctor decided to have us add a little bit of powdered formula to his bottles because he wasn’t gaining weight very fast. Two weeks after that we went in for his circumcision which went well but the doctor was concerned about some swelling in Rodney’s pelvis that might be a hernia so he set us up with a consultation down at Primary Children’s.

First pic of him WIDE awake

After a quick visit with the surgeon he decided that Rodney did indeed need surgery. As if being born 10 weeks early wasn’t enough, my 5-½ pound baby now needed to be put under anesthesia for surgery. As scary as this was the doctor reassured us that this is one of the most common procedures they do.

It was going to take about 3 weeks before they could fit us in so in the mean time (and as horrible as it was to think of, just in case the surgery didn’t go as planned) I had a friend come and shoot some newborn photos. They turned out SO good! Thanks Samantha Jane!

On Nov. 3 we drove down to Primary Children’s for the surgery. Having to hand my baby over to a surgeon and watch him walk away was horrible!

Waiting before surgery

They told us that we would probably be waiting 45 minutes to an hour. We waited in a big room with other parents where we watched as their surgeons would come in, give them good news and they would leave to see their child. I know that there were other families there for more serious surgeries but I was a wreck. Two and a half hours later our surgeon came in with another doctor and asked us to come into a private consultation room. At this point I was silently freaking out because it had been so long and apparently Nolan was thinking, “Crap, whenever we go on a death notice we never go alone!” It turned out that everything was fine and the other doctor was shadowing our surgeon. A few minutes later I got to go into recovery where Rodney was just waking up and hold him. They moved us into another room where we would spend the night. Normally it’s an out patient procedure but since Rodney was so small they wanted to monitor him to make sure he came out of the anesthesia alright.

The rest of the day was pretty tough on Rodney, and therefore us. He slept most of the time but when he was awake he would scream whenever Nolan held him. It was kinda sweet seeing that he needed his mommy but still heartbreaking knowing he didn’t feel good.

Sleeping off the anesthesia

Oh, he looks so pathetic. :-(

He did just fine overnight and we went home early the next morning. He mostly slept for the next few days but all he ever needed for the pain from 3 incisions was half a dropper of Tylenol!

The day after surgery and already perking up.

Rodney recovered from the surgery just fine and now you can barely see the little incisions. That’s all for this post!