In between Addy's 9 month and 1 year well-check, I started noticing a bump a little above her belly button. It wasn't going away and almost always was visible. Jared thought it was a hernia and so when we had her one year well check, I showed it to her pediatrician. She thought that it might be a hernia too so we were referred to a Pediatric surgeon. Her doctor also referred us to a Neurosurgeon for her head growth and asked me to go to get blood work down to check for lead levels. It's supposedly a new requirement.
Anyways, lots of added stress leaving that office. We immediately went in to see the Ped surgeon and she took one quick look and said, "Yeah, that's definitely a hernia."
She continued to explain that it looks like there are two, maybe three separate ones and they are epigastric hernias. She explained that what happens is that there aren't enough fibers connecting her muscle in her six pack area and so it's really easy for stuff to just poke through those gaps. She told me that it will keep happening and eventually start to pinch and hurt as she grows older and then when she eventually gets pregnant when having a family of her own in the future, it could be a bigger problem.
She suggested surgery to correct the problem. It would be an outpatient procedure. She would simply make a small incision above her belly button and go in and fuse the fibers in her tummy together and repair the herniated areas. I felt confident in her abilities and the whole concept so I agreed, but still took time to talk it over with Jared and see what he thought.
Meanwhile, we went to see the neurosurgeon and he told me that typically, head growth like hers most likely stays big and then at about 2-3 years old, it levels out and gets more proportionate to the body so it could be nothing. He told me that it wasn't imperative to get an MRI, but suggested it to cover his basis and make sure nothing truly serious was wrong. Since that required sedation, I tried to set it up to happen at the same time as her other surgery.
Everything got set up and we were good to go. The day or two before her surgery, her ped nurse called and informed me that the anesthesiologist said the machine doesn't work with the MRI machine at that hospital so we can either due the surgery and do the MRI some other time or reschedule the both of them for another hospital at least a couple weeks later.
We decided to move forward with the hernia surgery and decided to forgo the MRI since it was more out of convenience and we weren't terribly worried about that part of her medical issues.
The day of the surgery I tried to get a good nights sleep the night before, but totally couldn't sleep as well as I had liked. We had to be up and out and at the hospital at 6 in the morning which meant leaving at like 5:30 and waking up at around 5am. Blah!
When we got to the hospital, I signed in and we waited until our name was called to finalize all of our paperwork. Then, we waited even longer to be called back to the prep area. I just kept walking around with her in the stroller, pacing. When we finally got called back, we were placed in an area with a crib/bed gurney and they took her vitals and put on the bracelets. The nurse agreed that she should stay in her jammies and not the nightgown since she is happy and they wanted her to stay happy. FYI, she was fasting this whole time, since midnight the night before.
The wait was incredibly hard. She started getting antsy which made my job even harder to keep her happy. We looked at pictures, we watched the cartoons, we played in the crib, played some more and took that through cycles. After another hour had passed, I was getting worn out and I listened to the women in the bed with her baby next to us as the anesthesiologist ask her when the baby ate last. She said she had some bottle and cereal about an hour and a half ago. The anesthesiologist responded with the fact that she shouldn't have fed her baby and that they can't do the surgery any more (she had the same doctor and was supposed to go before us).
Needless to say, the woman was ticked off and I heard her talk in a livid manner to her hubby over the phone saying how no one ever told her she wasn't supposed to feed her baby after a certain time and was frustrated that she would have to come back another time to take care of things. Meanwhile, I was sure glad when I heard that because that meant we were next and it would be less waiting.
This is a picture of Addy before she started getting really restless. The lady left with her baby and the next child came in that was behind us. The anethesiologist finally came to us and I happily reported that she hadn't had anything to eat and was ready to go. Then, a little while later, her doctor came and she made marks on her tummy where the hernias were so that she could find them while she laid down for surgery. I then finally got her gown and footies on and the nurse took her away. I waited in the waiting room starting about 8:25 am.
The wait during her actual surgery seemed to go really fast. I talked on the phone with Jared a little to let him know what was going on and then started watching a movie, but didn't get too far into it when the her doctor came and found me. She took me back and explained how things went. She reported that there were 3-4 hernias total that she repaired, but everything went great. She doesn't have a whole lot of swelling like most people have afterwards, but
The recovery nurses were helping her out since she had come too while they came and got me. I tried to hold her cradle style, but all she wanted was to be propped up on my shoulder. That made it a little hard for me to keep her from slouching her head and neck, but it was manageable. She kept falling asleep and then coming too and crying. We tried giving her some watered down apple juice in her bottle, but she didn't really go for that much at all.
While I was rocking in the chair with Addy, the boy behind her surgery came into the recovery room and started waking up and they couldn't get a hold of his parents. It's funny what you hear from nurses while sitting there. They couldn't believe they couldn't find his parents for so long and when they finally got the mom, she was still walking slowly to her son while talking on her cell phone. She even stopped walking to finish the conversation as a nurse was holding and consoling her son who had been awake for a little already. I found that whole scenario kind of odd, but oh well.
They monitored Addy for a little and then gave us a prescription for Tylenol with codeine and discharged us at around 10 am. I went home with her and she slept a whole bunch the whole rest of the day. Having Tylenol to help with pain was a plus for her though.
This is what it looked like afterwards and it has healed up really well. While her doctor was in there, she pinned in her belly button since it was hanging out so much. Her outty I think was even more than mine when I was little. Now, the incision can't even be seen. It looks like its part of her normal belly button. It was a great experience and I'm glad she is better now. We had our final follow up appointment last week and all looks great and there are no more follow-ups needed.
