Owee on my bewwy

When Gray was about a year old we noticed a knot on his stomach. At his 18 month check up our pediatrician looked at it and said it was an epigastric hernia and said hopefully he will grow out of it by the time he started kindergarten. At his 2 year check up, she noticed it had changed and decided to send us for a consult with a pediatric surgeon. The pediatric surgeon checked it out and explained that this type of hernia would not go away and he would need to have surgery before he started school. He explained it would not repair itself and he would need to have it fixed before he started school or he would not pass a sports physical. He also recommended doing it sooner rather than later so that he would not remember it.

Since it wasn't a huge hurry, we decided to wait until after the holidays to have the surgery done. Although it is considered a minor surgery, it wasn't comforting for me to hear the doctor explain what he was going to do to my baby :"we make an incision, remove the fat that is poking through and then stitch the muscles back together and close him back up." Oh that's all, really?

The surgery itself took about an hour and this was probably one of the longest hours of my life! Thankfully our pastor and awesome friend, Bobby Reed, was there to talk to us and distract us the whole time. We've been through a total of 3 ear tube surgeries (2 for Liv and 1 for Gray) and to tonsilectemy for Olivia so the whole hospital/anesthesia thing is nothing new to us. But this time was a lot different! Grayson had a horrible time waking up from the anesthesia and he was in a lot of pain. He screamed and cried for about an hour, slept for about 30 minutes and then woke up screaming and crying and pulling at his incision. It was traumatizing for Michael and I to see our baby in so much pain. Finally about 3.5 hours after the surgery, the extra pain meds had kicked in and he had calmed down enough to go home.

Once home, I knew our biggest challenge would be keeping our rough and tumble little boy from moving around too much. He was still in a lot of pain when we first got home and nothing seemed to help (not even ice cream delivered by Grammy!). He slept for about 3 hours that afternoon and by that evening, he was good as new and you'd never even know he'd had surgery that morning! I followed him around the house trying to make sure he didn't hurt himself and rip his incision open. By the end of the next day, I took my eyes off him long enough to hear him superman himself off the futon in the playroom. He was just fine but it took several days for me to finally get comfortable with him "resuming normal activity". Now he's doing great and has a manly scar to show off!

A little pre-op entertaiment

Sweet baby boy