Surgery Photos - Before and After / Day 1

Magdalena continues to recover well from her surgery. She is not eating a lot yet, so we're not giving her the longer-lasting oxycodone pain medication regularly. Basically, last night she ate 100 mL of pedialyte and 13 oz of expressed breastmilk in the early-ish evening (until about 9 pm). Then at 12:30 or so she had 2 more oz breastmilk and some oxycodone. I went to sleep after that, and the night nurse gave her maybe (?) some more breastmilk and more oxycodone about 4 hours later, but when I woke up around 5:30 am, I found vomit on her blanket. Unsure what it was at first, I called the nurse, and when she came, Magdalena threw up a bunch more. We figured it was because of the oxy on an empty stomach, so put her back on morphine. The problem with morphine is that it doesn't last as long, and has to be given via IV, while the oxy lasts 4 hours and can be given orally.

About 9:20 am, Magdalena nursed for about 20 minutes, which was good. Around 12:30 she had about 4 bites of rice cereal with breast milk, but did not eat again until later in the afternoon, about 4:30, when she nursed again for about 15 minutes or so. We managed to get her to eat a little more rice cereal and some baby crackers, and she nursed once more for 8 minutes, but it's not enough that I feel comfortable giving her the oxy yet.

Also, we have been moved from the ICU to a regular room today around 4 pm. Right now M only has one IV line and her pulse monitor, as well as her blood shunt in her head. So she looks almost normal, despite the buddha puffiness of her entire body. She has been getting fluids from the IV all day and is peeing, but we have yet to get a BM. :-) Fun things to blog about!

Now she is on a little more morph and dozing. I wanted to take advantage of this time to post the photos of her before and after surgery, as well as from today.

Magdalena before surgery in the waiting room yesterday (6/29):

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Here she is in her little hospital gown waiting to go to anesthesia. She is about to make her little "MMMmmmm!!" noise that she makes when she is hungry (she hadn't eaten for about 7 hours at that point):

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Here is her head and new symmetrical forehead after surgery!

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No more flat face! Though her eyes are swollen shut - this is right after surgery (before too much puffiness set in):

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Mama and Magdalena lounging in her Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) bed post-nursing this morning - my feet are hanging off the bottom :-)

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And here she is just now in her bed about 28 hours post-surgery.

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One other great thing is that she actually sat up in her bed today in the regular recovery room post-nursing, opened her eyes, and almost laughed as we read Daddy Hugs and Mommy Hugs by Karen Katz. She knows those books, and we each took turns reading them to her. It was so good to see some recognition and pleasure on her puffy little face. :-)