Daily Peep: Thumbelina

More Surgery Photos

These are from the real camera, and better quality than the ones I sent from my phone while we were at the hospital.

Right after surgery

Under oxygen tent

Feeling a little better


Out of bed

"Fall Risk" - Ya think?


Home

Lesson Learned

Cloth diapering baby is great.

Cosleeping, with baby big enough to "fly free" in the bed without a "nest" is great.

Having baby sleep essentially ten hours, interupted only by some whimpers that are quieted by rolling over and sticking a boob in her mouth (and that one time that I woke her up for medicine around 1 am) is really great.

However . . .

It would probably also be great to actually change baby's cloth diaper at some point during the ten-hour period.


PS: Did I mention that baby takes Lasix?

Examine Her Zipper

This is a pretty good shot of Peeper's incision, six days post-op.

The smaller incision, below and to the right, is where her drain tube was. There's one stitch in that, which will just fall out.

It seems to be healing nicely, and when we were bathing her this evening, we noticed that the scab is already starting to come off in a couple of small places.

There are, of course, plenty of internal stitches (plus some wires, holding her sternum together), but the outer layer of skin is sealed with dermabond, which is basically a medical-grade superglue.

I'm sure that they put it between the two cut edges when they brought them together, and there's also about and inch-wide strip of it "painted" over the whole incision, which you can see in the photo.

That will also just wear away over time, and one edge is already starting to peel up a bit. I can't tell you how much restraint we are both having to exercise to stop ourselves from playing with it.

If it were on my own body, I'd have it about half off by now, I'm sure, but instead, I'm making do with trying to get the remains of other various adhesives - EEG leads, EKG leads, IV-sealing bandages, etc - off her skin.

(You can see some of that in the photo, on her neck (IV), and around her nipple (EKG); I think most of the EEG goo is out of her hair now.)

We have been told, by the way, that the scar will stay roughly the same absolute size as she grows, so it will not extend the full length of her chest as an adult. (Or, more importantly, as a teenager.)

I wasn't able to get a good description of exactly where it will end up (how high on her chest), but hopefully, it will just be more or less hidden in her cleavage, eventually.

We're also told that it should heal to be pretty thin and light, especially if we're careful to avoid too much sun-exposure in the first few years.

Of course, we'll use sunscreen on her anyway, and even before we had a scar to be concerned about, we liked the idea of "rashguard" style swimshirts better than traditional bathing suits for her anyway, mostly for sun protection, but also because so many little girl's bathing suits are so grown-up looking, and we really don't like that.

(Ah, but that's a whole 'nother post. . . .)

It occurs to me that, as she gets older, may be a fine line to walk, though, between covering the scar to protect it from the sun, and coming across (to her) as trying to hide it.

Although I can certainly understand that she may become self-conscious about it at some point (or maybe not, since it's something that will always be there, as far as she knows), I certainly don't want anything we do to give her the idea that it's something to hide or to be ashamed of.

I know that we'll get lots of questions about it, and she'll get even more later, so I guess we will just have to model for her how to answer nonchalantly, and to explain how she got it.

Which is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, I think it's something she should be pretty proud of, because she's been a real trooper through it all.

Daily Peep: Good Day, Sunshine

Readjusting

We've now been home about two days, and we're all still kind of getting readjusted.

Peeper saw one of her pediatricians yesterday, and she was quite impressed with the difference in her heart-sounds from the last time she listened. (There is no murmur at all now!)

She didn't really have a whole lot of insight for us on the bloody poop issue, though (and we've not seen any more since) but recommended agreed with my recommendation that I cut out the rest of the dairy from my diet - start actually reading labels, rather that just skipping the milk, cheese, ice cream and such.

She acknowledged that, "I know it's a lot of work. . . " but as I told her, "Well, it was a lot of work carrying her [Okay, not really.] and having her [Yes.] but it was worth it, and this is, too."

(But does she have to be sensitive to like my favorite foods in the whole world? Couldn't she be allergic to broccoli?)

Although the bloody poop is gone, Peeper's still spitting up, and had a couple more rather impressive spits while lying in her "nest" in the wee hours this morning.

(Could have been worse - most of the night, she was on the boppy in my lap.)

I called the doctor's office about it, because although this amount of spit-up might be a "good day" for some babies, it is very out of character for her.

The doctor said that the spitting, and what seems to be some painful poopies (but not hard or bloody) is likely caused by her little digestive system just having a hard time getting revved back up after being slowed down by the morphine that she was getting off and on for most of the week.

On Friday, she pooped around 2:30 pm, on the way home from the doctor's office, and then I don't think she did again until about 11 am today. That is not normal for her.

So, I suppose it's no surprise that she's spitting up. She's been nursing almost constantly, and nothing's leaving through the other end, so where else is that milk going to go, but back out the way it came in?

DoulaK stopped by to visit for a while this afternoon, and Peeper spit up a bit while she was here. She said that it was obvious how rare an occurance that is, because we were completely unprepared for it.

There was no spit-rag handy, there was none in the diaper bag, and we were absolutely at a loss as to what to do about it.

I had to go all the way to her bedroom, and into the dresser, and grab a cloth-diaper-that's-not-being-used-as-a-diaper to clean her up!

So, we're hoping she'll have the kinks worked out in the next day or two, and the spitting will stop, as well as the dramatics involved with pooping.

At least, we're assuming that's what she's crying about; she's got her leg a'kickin' and is not wanting to settle in to nurse, which generally goes along with poopy issues.

Also, we've had some crying just it's almost time for another dose of Tylenol, which we're assuming has to do with hurting from the surgery itself.

All in all, though, she's really hanging in there and doing very well. I've never had thoracic surgery, but I know that she's "getting around" much better than I was five days after abdominal surgery.

On the other hand, she is still very much a poor baby.

We have to remind ourselves that, on the inside, she had a pretty significant problem which has now been resolved - because, on the outside, it sure looks like we took a perfectly good baby and broke her.

Spring?

Flowers! In our yard! On our kid!

Daily Peep: My Girls

Are You Sick Of Hearing Me Talk About Poop Yet?

So, we took Peeper in to see the pediatrician this afternoon, for a post-op look-see and to talk about the bloody (again!) poop.

This was the same doctor (there are several in the practice) who saw her recently for her four-month appointment, and for her cold.

She said that she's looking great, for just having had open-heart surgery, that her incision is coming along nicely and that she couldn't hear any heart murmur at all!

As to the poop thing, basically Shrike and I both felt like the gist of what she said was, "Hell if I know."

I could be related to the narcotics that she had for pain relief slowing down her digestive system, and it's irritated as it's getting going again, or it could be more of the same, which could be a sensitivity to something in my diet, which could be dairy.

None of that is definitive at all.

We did agree that removing the "obvious" dairy from my diet has not done the trick, so she said to start reading labels and try to avoid all dairy products - which pretty much rules out just about anything that comes in a box.

That also rules out chocolate, which is going to be a tough one for me, but which I've kind of had a nagging feeling about - probably more like a fear that it was going to be the culprit, or at least an accomplice.

I asked whether I ought to do an actual elimination diet, but she said to try getting rid of the rest of the dairy and we'll see where things stand next week, when we go back for Peeper's last Synagis shot.

Oh, and she weighed 10 lb 7 oz - which, as I'm sure Anonymama will tell you, if I don't beat her to it - was my birth weight.

Daily Peep: That's More Like It