Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Recovery Day 1

As we went to bed last night I did some quick math in my head. They had given a baby a nerve block during his surgery, we were told that it would probably last about 12 hours. So that meant that sometime between 12 and 2 AM baby would need some medication. Sure enough, at 12:09 I heard a baby cry. "Oh, it is Sunday" I thought. My next thought was "What? Sunday? Huh?" and then I realized what was really going on, My baby was crying, and it was his pain cry.

The Surgeon had given us instructions and prescriptions (Start with Ibuprofen and supplement for the first 48 hours with Lortab). We were prepared. So we thought. We started with Ibuprofen. The baby took it greedily, but continued to scream and squirm. Every few minutes he, or we, would find a comfortable position for him and he would calm down for a few seconds, but much too soon he would start screaming again. Ice packs, Juice, Milk, nothing seemed to help.

After 35 minutes the pain killers started to work, the baby calmed down and within minutes was asleep in my arms. I wanted to hold him all night, but eventually I needed to sleep too, and so baby was laid in his bed and Mom and Dad went back to bed too.

At 5 AM we were awakened by the baby again. This time he was given Lortab (who knew they made liquid lortab for babies), and then his Dad fed him a bottle. The baby and his Dad were soon back in their beds. Dad woke up on his own at 7 and Baby and I slept until 8. Other than the 35 minutes of pain at midnight, it was a pretty successful night.

Following the every 8 hour rule for the Ibuprofen and giving the lortab 4-6 hours after the ibuprofen (when baby started to seem a little cranky and or in pain) worked really well and our family had a wonderful day.

Here are a few pictures from this morning. The baby was smiling from the time we got him out of bed, but quite abnormally, when the camera would turn on, the smile would turn off.

I wanted to show how he was up to his old tricks, but when he heard the ding of the camera, he took his hands off the TV, and turned to see what Mom was doing- and the smile went away too.
The smile would peek out quite often, but somehow he always seemed to hide it from the camera, in this photo from when he first woke up, he used his foot. Finally, Proof that our Baby still loves us!
Yeah, our sweet little baby was back, and up to his same old mischief.

1 comment:

Kristen said...

What a relief! I'm so happy to hear that he's recovering well and the surgery was successful thus far. Way to go and keep it up! He's lucky to have such understanding and comforting parents. Hang in there, little (big) guy!