Surgery Day

Well, by one minute....

We're at a hotel in SurgeryTown. Shrike is asleep in the bed, Peeper is asleep on the boppy in my lap and I am . . . blogging.

We were told not to give Peeper her "bedtime" (1 am-ish) meds tonight/this morning, so we figured we could go to sleep early, since we'll be up so early.

But, I was leery of putting her down for her long stretch of sleep at, say, 10 pm, because when we wake her up at 5 am to go to the hospital, I'd like very much for her to think (know) it's still the middle of the night, and not time for the breakfast that she's not allowed to have.

So, I'm on the laptop with Peeper nursing / sleeping / nursing in my lap for a bit longer, and then we'll crawl in bed and sleep until the alarm on my phone goes off around 3 am. At that point, I'll change her diaper to wake her up a bit and try to get her to nurse as much as possible, because I have to cut her off at 3:30 am.

That's the other reason for keeping her nursing for now - so that she's better prepared to get through that four hours from that last pre-op meal until they conk her out for the surgery.

I think that next to the moment when we have to actually hand her to the nurse to take back to the OR (which I cannot talk, type or even think about without crying), I think that may be the worst part of this - if she's awake and hungry while we're waiting, because she will be upset, and we will be upset, and she won't understand why I am refusing to nurse her.

(And, of course, neither will my breasts, so I'll be hurting physically as well as emotionally.)

All I can think of to try to prevent that, or at least temper it a bit is to get her good and tanked up now, to basically encourage her to "cluster feed" more or less up until the cut-off time, so she'll sleep through as much as possible.

I wish I thought I could just stay up and nurse her constantly until 3:30, but that would be pretty stupid, since I'll be up again at 5-ish and won't be getting decent sleep for the next four days.

So, I guess I'll let her finish this meal, then get myself ready for bed, maybe give her a new diapers, and we'll get in bed and maybe nurse her back to sleep if needed, then catch a couple of hours of sleep for myself.

Looking at her right now, I see that her little head is getting quite sweaty - that's a sign of fatigue which is caused by the difficulty she's having breathing, and we're seeing more and more of signs lately of the VSD actually having an impact on her - the rapid breating, sweating while nursing, her chest sucking in more, and even a couple of very brief episodes of blueness around her mouth.

That's why we're doing the surgery, and that's why it's time to do it.

But we still hate it.