Ethan's long day

Our poor little Ethan had to have surgery yesterday. He's fine, it wasn't anything too serious but it is still preferable to never have baby and surgery in the same sentence together. We first noticed a problem a couple of weeks ago while I was changing his diaper. He had this small round protrusion on his abdomen. Even though it went away I asked his doctor about it and she wanted me to call her if I ever saw it again. It ended up making a repeat appearance that very same day and never really went away after that. She sent me to Primary Children's for a consult and the doctor there confirmed he had a Bilateral Inguinal Hernia and he would need surgery. Luckily this is a pretty common procedure and Primary Children's is definitely where you want to be when your baby needs surgery.

We checked in at 6:00 a.m. (they leave the first slot open for the youngest patients since they don't let them eat anything after 4:30 a.m.) and after answering final questions and signing consent forms we changed him into his hospital outfit. He was being so cute and smiley. He obviously had no idea what was about to happen. I had to use my phone to snap a picture of Kris putting him in his miniature hospital gown.


After his doctor gave us a breakdown of what was about to happen we kissed our little guy goodbye and handed him over to the anesthesiologist. The surgery took about an hour and a half before they allowed one parent back to see him. Being his mom I got the privilege of going (I really don't think many dad's get back there to be honest!) His nurse told me he was extremely agitated and teary when he came off the anesthesia so they put painkillers in his IV and I shouldn't worry if he's "out of it" for a while. Even though I knew he was going to be okay I couldn't help getting a little emotional seeing just how small he looked laying on that bed. He was the smallest baby in surgery that day and that made it a little worse for me. She was right about him being out of it, we could NOT wake that kid up to eat. You would think he would have been starving considering he hadn't eaten for 6 hours.


I realize that this was nothing major and I really respect moms who have to deal with worse than this, it's rough seeing your little one sick or hurting! I'm sure he'll be back to his smiling self in no time. And as if he could read this, I just got a big grin!