The Waiting Game

The waiting is killing me. I don’t think she will be calling tonight. UGH. Yesterday my baby girl had an upper endoscopy. They put her to sleep for that. My mom went with me, and we sat in the room with her while the nurse got her ready. We put her in some pajamas, and then she spotted the bottle I had in the diaper bag for after the procedure. She started pointing and whining, but she couldn’t have anything to eat or drink. Then they gave her some medicine to help her relax, and it worked within a few minutes. She was cuddled in my lap with her blanket. They let me take her back to the room, and I lay her on the table. She was looking up at the ceiling with this dreamy look in her eyes, half-smiling. The nurse was talking to her, and I was caressing her head and her hair. She kept looking at me and smiling. Then she would give me a kiss. It was almost funny, but I was nervous. Then they put the gas mask on her and she started to wiggle around. “Give her a kiss,” they told me. “She’ll be fine.” I kissed her hand, and got all choked up. When I walked away she was limp on the table with her eyes closed. That was so hard. I can only imagine what it must be like for a mother to send her child off to major surgery. This is the second time I have sent her off to dream-land for a procedure. The first time she was only 11 days old. They did a rectal biopsy. I bawled my eyes out all the way to the waiting room. I couldn’t help it. The emotions are so intense. She was so tiny laying there in my arms, so perfect and beautiful. I just handed her over to them and trusted them with her life. There’s so much worry about the results, and what could happen.

The whole thing was only like 20 minutes long, and they called me back and said everything looked good, and it went well. They did three biopsies, her esophagus, stomach and small intestine. Also blood work to check for soy allergy (and recheck the other things, I think). They are looking for allergy cells, inflammation, and checking for celiac disease, so we will know once and for all. Apparently the blood tests are pretty inaccurate in children under 3. That sort of makes me mad, since I didn’t need to put her through a blood test. However, if they wouldn’t have done the blood draw, we wouldn’t have seen abnormal liver function, and they wouldn’t have sent me to this doctor in GI. She is really nice, and she said she would call tonight after 5, or tomorrow morning for sure with the results. Nothing so far.

They called me back to see her when she woke up and I could hear her screaming. She only had her diaper on, and was hooked up to an IV, heart monitor and pulse oximeter. I held her and tried to calm her, but she screamed and thrashed around for like 20 minutes, getting tubes all tangled up and trying to yank out her IV. It was awful. You could see that she was still a little out of it. Her eyes weren’t even all the way opened. Finally they gave her a narcotic to help with any pain and to settle her down. Within minutes she was calm, her eyes were opened and she relaxed against me. They gave her some apple juice to drink and she guzzled it down, drinking three small bottles and asking for more. She kept sticking her foot out where the pulse oximeter was like, “Look at what’s on there! Aren’t you going to take it out?” Same with her IV. Finally they took all the stuff off her, and put a bandage where her IV was. It was purple, and she kept holding her hand out and showing it off to us. She kept that thing on all day, very proud.

When we got back to my grandma’s house, she was starving, and she ate like she hadn’t eaten for days. It was like nothing had ever happened. She won’t remember any of it, but I will. You always wonder what the right decision is for your child, and if you are doing the right thing. It’s the hardest thing about being a mom.

One funny thing was the reaction the nurses had to her cloth diaper. They just couldn't figure it out. What was inside it? Where did I get it? One nurse said, "So is it disposable, then?" I answered, "No. It's cloth." Is it really all that strange? They must not see many kids in cloth diapers, which is really unfortunate. I am spreading the word wherever I go!