Macy's Surgery

For those of you who haven't heard yet, Macy had emergency surgery on Monday. Everything went great and she's all back to normal now, but we had a pretty scary and crazy day. Here's how it all went down (sorry it's so long).

Macy was really fussy all Sunday night. We had a hard time getting her to sleep, even when we brought her to bed with us in the morning (which is extremely unusual), but I finally got her to sleep for a couple of hours after Greg left. When she woke up at 9:00 she played for a minute but then vomited. It was way beyond normal spit-up, I knew it wasn't from overfeeding, and there weren't any other symptoms, so I called the base clinic to see what I should do. They said a nurse would call me back.

Meanwhile, I looked up her symptoms on babycenter.com. There were very few conditions that listed solely vomiting and irritability, but I read them all carefully. After Macy threw up two more times within the hour I called the clinic again and spoke to a nurse immediately. She said it was probably just a stomach bug and to make sure she stayed hydrated. She threw up two more times after that.

Right after Greg got home for lunch I changed Macy's diaper and found a large lump in her pubic area. I remembered that from the list of symptoms to watch for and that it said to contact a doctor immediately. Since I knew that wouldn't do us any good I told Greg we needed to go to the emergency room. There's a hospital right down the street, so we were there within 10 minutes.

When we finally saw a doctor after being admitted he confirmed our diagnosis, then had a surgeon come look at her--she had what's called an incarcerated hernia. The incarcerated part just means that it's trapped--usually an infant hernia can be pushed back in place and doesn't require surgery, but in Macy's case the hernia twisted.

Incarcerated hernias can be extremely dangerous because they can trap portions of intestine inside (that's usually what causes the vomiting and is called an incarcerated strangulated hernia), so she was taken to surgery within a few minutes after the surgeon checked her out. After some painful moments of blood testing and other pokes and prods to her little body I had to hand her over to the nurse, who took her away for the procedure. That was probably the hardest part. She was so upset and I was the only one who could console her--it felt so wrong to let her go.

After about 20 minutes the surgeon came to tell us that everything had gone really well and she was in recovery. Unfortunately, her left ovary had gotten caught in the hernia and died. I guess there's so little bloodflow to ovaries that they die within two hours of being "choked." The surgeon assured us that her chances of getting pregnant are no different than anyone else's as long as nothing happens to the other ovary.

We had to wait another hour before we could see her, but when the recovery nurses finally brought her up to her room in the pediatric wing she was so happy to see us (and we finally stopped pacing). She snuggled into my shoulder and didn't leave for quite a while.

She was pretty happy that day--the surgeon said that if an adult had that surgery they'd be curled up in pain for two days but that babies bounce right back. She did get a dose of morphine, which made her fall asleep for about half an hour. When she woke up she was particularly funny and happy. Wade and Morgan came to visit us in the hospital so Wade and Greg could give Macy a blessing (there wasn't time before the surgery).

Here are some pictures we took yesterday morning. The yellow around her incision is leftover iodine, not bruising.


Yesterday she was all smiles, but she got pretty bored while we waited for the surgeon to discharge her. Here's a video we got while she was extra talkative (also from yesterday morning).

She ended up pulling her hand off the board it was strapped to, so the nurse took her IV out and we got her in her own pajamas. After that she was much happier.

When we got home around 2:30 p.m. she fell asleep and didn't wake up until about 6:00. She went back to sleep at 9:00 and didn't wake up until 8:00 this morning. She was obviously pretty exhausted.

Today her incision is looking much better and she seems to be completely back to normal--she rolls around and smiles and plays like nothing ever happened. She didn't nap today though, so she made up for letting us sleep through the night.

So there's the whole story. Thank you all so much for your prayers and support. We're sure glad it's all over.