A tough day for the little man....

Today started rough and has continued to be so. I was not supposed to feed Will anything but breastmilk after midnight, so I had pumped enough in the last 2 days to supplement. I could then feed him till 4 hours before the surgery, which was 9:30am. I woke him up at 3:30 to eat and then again at 5. He was very sleepy and I wish he could have understood that he wouldn't be able to eat again for a long time. We got him ready and ourselves to leave for the hospital at 6:30. As usual, things started to go wrong right before it was time to leave. Will spit up all over his sleeper and then pooped so naturally we left late. We got to the freeway and hit traffic. This is the clock when we got on the freeway, with a long way to go and an arrival appointment for 7:30am. EEK! Amazingly we ended up only about 10 min late, which was fine because the check in process was very slow.

They put us in a waiting room with a few other families and we waited for our name to be called. Will was fine, and slept through much of this time.

Finally they called us and took us back to a room. We undressed him and put him in two tiny little gowns that were still too big. They took his vitals and weighed him (10 pounds). Then they put us in a different waiting room where there were lots of other kids in gowns and many worried parents. A very nice grandma prayed for William. She was there with her grandaughter who was having a broken arm repaired.

Will slept through this and the resident came in and talked to us, as well as the anesthesiologist. The resident marked the lump with a pen and had us sign consent forms. They had given us a surgery time of 9:30, which Will slept through. Then 10am came and then 10:30... By now Will was waking up and getting very hungry. He was getting really ticked off!

I normally am a person who understands, but now I had a starving mad baby and full breasts that were feeling his pain. The surgeon came in then and he told us it would be another 15-20 min. I felt he should apologize to the waiting room for us. However soon enough they came and took my poor baby away and sent us to the parent waiting area. It was very busy and I felt bad for some of the people in there, lots of tearful mom's and worried faces.

After just 45 min or so our surgeon came back and told us it was all over. He had found the mass was between the muscle layers and had managed to remove all of it. It was encased in muscle tissue so he was not able to see what the actual lump was made of. He sent it to pathology and we should have a result within a week. He doesn't think it's anything serious. It still doesn't point to malignancy. So we will find out soon.

He said Will was already waking up and that they would come and get us soon, and in a few minutes we were paged and sent back to his little room. It was very strange to see him there lieing on this big bed with lots of monitors and 2 IV's. It made me remember the NICU again.

They told me we could hold him and that I could feed him as soon as he wanted to. I tried but he was having a hard time latching. I had some pumped milk in a bottle so we tried that. His throat was sore and cry was very raspy. It seemed to hurt to swallow and he seemed to gag easily, so not much milk got down. We waited there 2 hours watching the monitors and listening to other kids cry, and the kid in the next room snore very loudly.

Jason and I were intrigued by the glowing thumb. It was just his oxygen monitor, but because he was so little it glowed all the way through and lit it up like Rudolph's nose.

After a while the Dr came in and said we were ok to go home. He was still very sleepy, and cried pitifully every time we moved him even a little. I was very nervous about dressing him and putting him in his car seat, but it actually went ok. We drove home and Jason held him for a few hours and I took a much needed nap. I will try and let Jason get extra sleep tonight because I can sleep tomorrow. Will is fussy and gassy, still having some eating issues but seems to be waking a little. I feel so bad that he had to go through this, but I still think now is better than later, when he would be more aware of what was happening. Let's all hope for the best pathology report and wish this guy a speedy recovery!