KerryAndGabe.com

Others writing The Sunday Somethings: Audrey

Something that made me smile this week: This weekend, my parents turned on the TV to see the Nascar race, and Maddie pointed at the TV and said, “car, car, car, car, car, car…”

Something I’m thinking: I’m thinking about what we want to do tomorrow as I’m taking a vacation day and Gabe has a holiday for the 4th. I think Maddie is going to daycare so that we can run some errands (such as getting a new tire for the car, ugh!).

Something I am hoping: I’m hoping Maddie’s tubes surgery will improve her health (and our sanity!).

Something happening around the house: Donations for the MS Yard sales are piling up in many corners around the house. I’m excited about the potential that we could earn for the National MS Society!

Something I’m reading: I really didn’t get a chance to read much of anything this week.

Something tasty I ate this week: I decided I needed to buy and eat Pirouette cookies. YUM.

Something Maddie did this week: Maddie had her tubes surgery. Time will tell if this helps her with illness and pain.

Something I struggled with this week: I’m not sure if I struggled with this, but I had mixed feelings about it. This is the first full week that Maddie did not nurse at all. After we cut out the night nursings and then the early morning nursings, it wasn’t long before she stopped asking to nurse altogether.

Something I’m doing towards my goals: I haven’t done much towards my goals this week aside from some of the usual ongoing goals. I did some of the fundraising efforts for the upcoming MS yard sales, as I mentioned above.

Something I learned this week: I learned how to change a tire…sorta. On the way back from our trip to Davidson this weekend, one of our tires exploded. Gabe was pretty quick at changing the tire, and I watched from a safe distance with Maddie. This was Gabe’s first tire change, and he did a great job! We made it home, and the tire didn’t fall off or anything.

Something I’m looking forward to next week: I’m looking forward to our games day/night! It will be Gabe’s turn to play and my turn to hang out with the kiddies.

Something random: My cousin has whooping cough! We were supposed to visit this past weekend, but we canceled our plans, of course. I was surprised to hear that he had whooping cough – you really don’t hear about the disease much these days!

Something I captured: I’d post one of the photos from this weekend, but I am too tired to download the new photos from my cameras. So, here’s one that I had already posted from Maddie’s surgery.

I’ve posted the album for Maddie’s Tubes Surgery (which includes a few more than you see below). Click on any of the photos in this post to see the entire album.

We gave Maddie a dose of Tylenol around 8pm the night before her surgery, and then we woke her up at 11:30pm to give her Motrin. She woke up just enough to swallow the medicine and went right back to sleep. We didn’t want to take any chances that she might wake up at 1am screaming for hours (like the previous night and many others with these nasty ear infections).

She miraculously slept in the crib until it was time to go to the hospital. Of course, we had to wake her up a little before 5am, but still…two months ago there’s no way she would have still been in the crib! We arrived at the hospital right at 5:30am. They were pretty quick about checking us in and getting us to the pre-op area. Once in the pre-op area, they gave us a baby gown and we waited for various nurses and doctors to visit with us and fill out paperwork.

We were worried about how we were going to entertain her for 2 hours (especially considering she wasn’t allowed to eat all morning). She never complained about food or drink. She was pretty calm, probably because she wasn’t quite awake yet! They had a playroom for the surgery kids that kept her entertained most of the time.

When the anesthesiologist came by, he recommended against the loopy meds that they give to little kids before the operation. It helps the kids with the transition to the operating room, but it can make the recovery harder. He felt like Maddie was calm enough and wouldn’t need it. He even did a trial and carried Maddie out of the room to see how she would react. She didn’t get upset at all!

They gave her a little mask similar to the one that they would use just before the surgery to make her sleep. She played with it for a little bit, and then they were ready for her to go to surgery! She cried just a little as they started to wheel her bed, but she recovered very quickly and was calm before she was out of our sight. She’s such a brave little girl!

We headed to the waiting room where we sat for less than 10 minutes. Everyone told us that the tubes surgery is really fast! We weren’t surprised when the doctor came by to let us know how everything went within 10 minutes. Maddie’s left ear was quite infected (not a surprise to Mommy – I knew that something was not right with my child, despite the pediatrician telling us that everything looked fine in there the previous morning). The ENT described a pretty gross scene in that ear and prescribed us with some additional drops to help with the infection and healing. After he described what he saw in her left ear, we felt even better about our decision to get the tubes.

It wasn’t too long afterwards that they paged us to the recovery room. I could hear my sweet baby girl before we entered the patient area. Poor thing! She was not having a good time. She was quite upset, and there wasn’t much that we could do to make her happy. I felt like it took forever for them to discharge us, but it was probably less than 30 minutes. Once we started walking towards the exit, Maddie was much happier. She smiled when she saw we were walking outside!

She fell asleep once we were moving in the car, and she slept for about 45 minutes. We knew that we would have a hard time getting her back to sleep, so I drove around while Gabe picked up some groceries. I’m glad we gave her a little extra time to sleep since she refused to nap the rest of the morning. She was tired, but we couldn’t convince her to nap until around 1pm.

After her nap, which was only about an hour and a half, she was a pretty happy baby! I posted a video yesterday to show how she was acting by the afternoon. You wouldn’t know that she had surgery that morning! We hope to see a big difference in Maddie with her overall mood, sleeping habits, and illnesses. Hopefully, the tubes will do the trick!

I’ll write more later about our experiences with the tubes surgery, but for now I thought I’d update with this video we took this afternoon. She’s doing just fine. Click on the post to see the embedded video.

Maddie had her first ear infection shortly after Halloween last year. She had been really sick with Roseola and the ear infection showed up a few days later. She didn’t have another one until February after her battle with the flu, another very tough illness. Since February she has had several more stubborn ear infections and seems like she’s had fluid in her ears non-stop.

In early May, she had one and this is when we discovered her penicillin allergy in the form of scary hives. The ear infection went away for a few days, and then returned while she still had the hives. The next antibiotic was unsuccessful, and the third antibiotic finally worked. She recovered just in time for our cruise.

We’ve been battling yet another ear infection less than a month later. This time they prescribed the same antibiotic that worked last time, but it didn’t work for her this time. They prescribed a second one that seemed to work, but a week later we found ourselves in the pediatrician’s office again (this morning).

The visit to the pediatrician this morning was absolutely miserable. I knew that something was not right with my baby girl. She had a horrible night, and she had been acting like she’s in pain. We took her to the walk-in clinic this morning where we were for almost 2 hours. So much for a quick visit! The doctor checked her ears. Aside from some fluid, they looked fine.

Since we didn’t have another reason for her behavior, we opted to attempt to get a urine sample. The process of collecting a urine sample from a baby/toddler does not seem like it would be very comfortable. They literally tape a bag to her crotch and we wait. Maddie screamed from about this point forward and the bag was attached for nearly an hour. We finally told the nurses that enough was enough, we were done with this. They said we had the option of leaving the bag on her and returning with the sample later, but we asked them to remove the bag and let us go. It was an awful experience.

She went to daycare, and they called me mid-afternoon to inform me that Maddie has a fever and that I would need to pick her up. She also had some sticky fluid coming out of her ear. I went to get her, and sure enough she had some nastiness around her ear. I was worried that her ear drum had ruptured and with the fever she would not be able to have her tubes surgery in the morning as originally planned.

We called the ENT, and they wanted to see her this evening. Her ear had deteriorated during the day and was a bit gross by the time we saw the ENT. The good news is that he still felt we should proceed with the surgery in the morning! He gave us an antibiotic and instructed that we could give her Tylenol and Motrin tonight, as long as we didn’t give her anything past midnight (no food, water, meds, etc). Time to get to bed so we can be at the hospital bright and early at 5:30am!