Home Sweet Home!

We got home today around 2:15pm and so far Emma is doing great! Gabby (Judy) is staying with us for a few days so mommy will have some great help. Now for a little bit about her surgery and hospital stay...

We had to arrive at 7:30am on Monday. We had to wait for a few minutes before they took us back to a waiting room. Emma did well except she didn't want to wear her pretty yellow gown. Mommy finally got it on her. The nurses and doctors were all so nice to us which helped alot. I've never been on the peds floor or the preop area but it is really kid friendly with playrooms/wagons/jeeps. So after we met with the anesthesiologist and Dr. Castillo the nurse came and we put Emma in a purple princess jeep and George and I kissed her, said "we love you" and she drove off. I had to fight the tears away b/c I knew I would start the "ugly cry" if I didn't fight it. So about 45 minutes later Dr. Castillo came out and said she did fine. He said on a scale of 0-4 with 0 being the smallest and 4 being the largest, Emma's tonsils were a 4 with her adenoids being a 3. He said she should definitely start breathing better! They also drained her sinuses and he said she had lots of snot in her sinuses. They are sending it off for testing to see if any bacteria is growing.
After he talked to us I went back to recovery to cuddle with Emma while George took our items up to our room-Rm 412. Once again I almost lost it when I saw my princess b/c she looked so pitiful. She was kind of crying and saying "mommy" & I started tearing up. They let me pick her up and she just snuggled with me and fell asleep. Her breathing and blood pressure were fine & they gave her some morphine. She stayed in recovery for about 45 minutes before we went to the room. Then things went downhill. Emma went almost 5 hours without any pain medicine at all and was really struggling. She wasn't drinking or eating anymore so we asked for pain medicine. George and I got kind of frustrated with our nurse b/c it didn't seem like she was trying to help us at all. So we tried to give Emma some of her hydrocotine and she spit most of it out. She took a little nap and then woke up screaming for what seemed like hours. It was so so so hard to see her in so much pain. She kept crying and saying "mommy" in her pain voice. She also didn't want anyone else to touch her but mommy so it was hard. Finally around 4ish we called the nurse and asked if we could give her some kind of pain meds b/c she hadn't drank in over 4 hours and it was horrible. The nurse gave her some morphine around 4:30pm (who knows why we weren't offered it before) but anyways, it helped trememdously. She immediately started drinking/eating and wanting to walk around the hallways. Completely different child! The rest of the night was great. Emma continued to eat popsicles, vanilla pudding, applesauce, french fries, baked potato and whatever else she could get her hands on! Around 9pm Emma and I fell asleep in the hospital bed and she slept fairly well. I woke up several times but she was tired. Oh and around 11:15 the respiratory therapist came in and gave her her nebulizer! I was not happy it was so late but Emma slept through the whole thing.

Fast forward to this morning-Emma's 2nd Birthday! Emma woke up around 7:45am and was in her usual chirpy mood. I guess that pain medicine every 4 hours was working. The dr came in a few minutes after we woke up. I ordered some scrambled eggs, applesauce, vanilla yogurt, and chocolate milk for Emma. She was eager to eat! From there we played in the bed and strolled her around the hallways. She liked seeing all of the people instead of being crammed in the hospital bed. We both dozed off around 11:45 and then the nurse came in at 12:30 to say we could go home!!! Emma was still sound asleep so she wasn't very happy when the nurse started taking the tape off her arm to remove the IV. That started a meltdown. Plus her pain meds were overdue so I'm sure that didn't help. Finally we got her clothes on her and everything packed up. She wanted to walk herself so we let her and she carried her blanket. Right before we left we ventured into the gift shop to buy some more Sesame Street characters. I think we got Cookie Monster, Bert, Ernie, Snuffy, Big Bird, and Grover. Emma was ecstatic!

So now we've been home all afternoon and Emma is still doing wonderful! If you didn't know about the surgery, you would think nothing ever happened. I'm hoping everything stays this smoothe. Emma is such a trooper and has just amazed me. Tonight she has a few birthday presents to open so that should be fun. Now on to the pics...

In the pre-op room not wanting to wear her yellow gown! Of course we had Elmo & Zoe!


Mommy trying to explain that she has to wear her gown. We even put it on Elmo!



Yay, we have gown success! What a sad face & the surgery hasn't even started!


In her room after the surgery. She just wanted Mommy to hold her and that was fine with me. Mommy loves snuggling with the princess!

Emma HATED the IV! Seriously, she was not happy about it. I felt so bad for her.

Enjoying a popsicle on daddy's lap.

She was feeling better and watching her Elmo dvd on Gabby's laptop. Elmo & Zoe always make it better!

Sending out emails to remind everyone it was her birthday today!

Happy Birthday breakfast! She loved those scrambled eggs chocolate milk!

Riding in the wagon with all of her "babies!" She's so cute!

We bought her a Birthday Girl shirt from Gymboree over the weekend so she could wear it home today. After a huge meltdown and struggle, we finally got the shirt on!!! Here she is chowing down on a chocolate chip cookie before we went home. That's my girl!

That's it for now. I'll post more pics tomorrow hopefully. Thanks for reading my novel. I wanted to document Emma's first hospital experience (besides her 3 month NICU stay) so she can look back and read about it someday. Happy Birthday Emma!