Post Op: Day 1

I had slipped out to check on Chance and grab some food from Starbucks at around 5 that morning.   Just in time to miss the doctor’s rounds, of course.   My mom relayed the message that they were expecting him to go home later that day.  What?!  The surgeons had said they thought he would only stay a couple of days, but we didn’t expect to only spend one night there.  How on earth can an infant have a piece of his skull taken out and then be sent home the following day?   Babies have the most incredible fight, will to live, and miraculous healing capabilities.   We think they’re so fragile, but they handle and recover from things a million times better than adults! It’s amazing!  

So, at around 8 a.m., Archer was able to be freed from a lot of his tubes.    He was smiling and kicking around. Back to his old tricks!  He had only almost smiled one other time, during an early morning diaper change by my mom and myself.  As usual, his awake time was approaching the one hour mark, and he began to get fussy.  Another patient had been admitted into the room again that morning, so I was trying my best to keep him from crying much.  I was able to rock him back to sleep for about 45 minutes, before the order was finally submitted for us to move to the regular recovery room.  During that time, Dr. Fuchs visited us again and mentioned going home that afternoon after they monitored him a bit more.  The morning nurses helped us get archer into the “crib” bed to wheel him down to the recovery room.  Luckily, he had had just enough sleep to not be a total fuss, and was alert and smiling.  One of the nurses even asked me, “Is he normally just a really happy baby?” To which Chance and I looked at one another, laughed, and said, “No, he’s usually pretty cranky.”  

We were unable to take the rocking chair with us to our new room, so my mother in law had gone and gotten us a camping chair that rocked!   God send!! So grateful that she thought of that, because it allowed us to get another couple of power naps for Tater.  At around 4 pm, we got a visit from one of the doctors on Dr. Marcus’ team, saying that he was putting in the paperwork for us to go home!   Less than 36 hours later, we were going to be back at our house. It seemed like days being in the PICU with a child in pain, but what an amazing turn around!  When we were taken to the recovery room, we were told that pain meds would be administered as needed.  We were to let the nurses know if Archer seemed fussy. He never did.  He went from morphine all night to nothing. NOTHING! We gave him a small dose of Tylenol when we were home, the following day, but he never used his prescription for oxycodone.  The doctor discharging us kinda gave a surprised face, and said he was impressed that archer was not on anything, but that it was great news.   We packed up and headed into rush hour traffic to make our way home and put our tater baby to bed.  My amazing mother in law made us dinner, and I even had a moment to sit with my sweet cousin who came into town that day.