Alex had his first surgery on May 24th. We had to be at the hospital at 8:30 and the surgery was scheduled for 10AM. However, the doctor was running behind and Alex didn't actually get into surgery until almost noon. The surgery lasted 5.5 hours and Alex did great. The surgery was successful in what the doctor was able to do, however, he was unable to do everything that he had planned. After starting the surgery, the surgeon found out that Alex's eurethra was so under developed - that he spend the entire 5.5 hours working on that. I met Alex in the recovery room and he was so brave. He was lying on that bed attached to all those monitors - it's such a scary site to see your baby like that. The nurses let me pick him up and hold him while he was coming out of the anestheisa. After he woke up a little, they moved us to another room where Doug could join us. At this point - it was 6PM at night and Alex hadn't eaten in almost 24 hours. He was SO excited to see that bottle! He drank the whole thing and ate yogurt melts instantly. The few days after the surgery were much better than we thought they would be. He was obvioulsy a little uncomfortable - but never seemed to be in a great deal of pain. One of the things Doug & I worried about was that this surgery would slow down his progress developmentally...and in fact, the exact opposite happened. He didn't like to crawl after the surgery (had a tube in his bladder for 10 days and crawling must have been uncomfortable for him) - so he started walking more. He contineus to do well. We had a minor scare the day they took the tube out of his bladder. He developed a 102 fever that night. Ended up being a bladder / urinary tract infection that was controlled by antibiotics. His surgery was one month ago tomorrow and you would never even know he had it. It's amazing how resiliant little ones are! Thank you all for your prayers! Next one will be sometime around Thanksgiving.
Alex is still a "challenging" boy...and we are still in the transition phase as a family (almost 5 months later)! He definitely wants all the attention and will let you know he is very unhappy when he isn't getting it. He is also still very resistant to anything new and it takes several tries to make him feel comfortable in a new setting. He's a demanding, stubborn, strong willed little boy, who is completely attached to his mom! However, after not getting any love or affection for the first 15 months of his life - no wonder he has some of these issues we are still working through! He's grown so much in the past 5 months. We just stopped giving him his nighttime bottle this week. The doctor said it was no longer necessary as he is now 28 pounds! He is also so close to walking. Actually, he is walking - but just refuses to do it without holding onto someone's hand - even though he totally could (remember the stubborn comment :-) He has the coordination and the balance down - just needs to gain the confidence now. He continues to learn new words. He just added banana to the list and will recognize and point some words out in a book. I can't help but wonder in a year from now what he'll be like - talking and running around after his big brother.
