Isaiah's Surgery

10/6/2011

When Isaiah was around 2 months old, he had to go in for an inguinal hernia repair.

I noticed the hernia when he was a month and a half. Because of my training as an RN, one would expect that I'd have a stomach for unpleasant things pertaining to the body. I'd say that during school and while working as a nurse, that was true. Now that I am a stay at home mom, I must be going soft. I'm fine with the normal baby stuff - what goes in, what comes out (either end I might add) - as one would have to be in order to take care of children. But the abnormal stuff gets me sometimes. "Don't freak out, remember all the stuff you learned in school, it's not that gross," etc., I tell myself all the time. But now that I identify myself as a mom rather than a nurse, I always expect the worst and try to web-MD everything instead of first thinking about what the problem coud be on my own. Boy, I ramble.

So, basically when I noticed the hernia, I didn't notice the hernia. I saw one side of the scrotum smaller than the other and immediately thought, "Crap, where did the other testicle go? I would have noticed earlier if only one dropped, right? Could it have gotten stuffed back in there? How the heck do I get it out?" Then I called Brett. I figured that he would be more expert in scrotum-tology. He had to leave his home teaching appointment early to come back home and reassure me that our son indeed had both his testicles. Of course, by the time Brett got home, Isaiah's man parts were perfectly back to normal.

Did I mention that I have never really been around kids or babies other than my own, especially not male babies? Don't judge me.

Well a few days went by, and eventually I realized that he had a hernia and that it was protruding bowel and not a disappearing testicle that was the problem. Again, I'm not as dumb as I sound, I figured it out in the end. After some truly terrifying crying spells we finally pushed our way to a consult and got it all set up to have his hernia repaired.

I'm writing this well after the event, so I don't remember everything, but I do remember how nervous I was about having my new, tiny, perfect baby put under anesthesia. I remember crying the night before the procedure because I was so worried.

So the night before, he wasn't allowed to nurse. We were worried about Isaiah being hungry and inconsolable since he was so young and had never gone more than three hours without eating. It was a miracle that day. He hadn't had anything to eat after 2 am the night before. He didn't cry and didn't complain. He slept for longer periods than he ever had prior to that day (and following that day he resumed his normal schedule of eating a ton and being a bad sleeper) and was pretty much a dream baby. They took him back, his surgery went well, he recovered perfectly and never had any complications. He is one now and still an awesome kid.

Here are some pictures of the hospital and him at the after the surgery:

Here he is waking up in PACU.