Aiden's Amazing Life: Surgery # 1

Now that we are settled back home, I can catch up on some serious blogging about Aiden's surgery. So here it is....

We left on Sunday, August 14th to fly to Chicago. The departure was everything I thought it would be...emotional. It was hard to say goodbye to my family because I knew what leaving meant but I pulled through and we were on our way. We had a perfect flight, which I wasn't expecting because I thought that Aiden would be a little restless sitting on our laps for a little over 4 hours. It was supposed to be a full flight but we were lucky enough to have the entire row to ourselves. Aiden was IN HEAVEN. He sat there the whole time playing with his toys and looking out the window.

We finally arrived in Chicago and were on our way to the hotel. It was about 45 minutes away but of course the GPS made a mistake and it took us about 90 minutes to finally arrive. We were starving so we headed out for some dinner and then when we arrived back at the hotel, we met up with another nevus family who were also staying there. Nadia, Roberto, Taelor (nevus owner) and Jaeda made our night! They are an AWESOME family and I am so grateful to have them there with us.

We were told that we could give Aiden his last feeding at midnight so Michael and I stayed awake until then. I knew that I wouldn't sleep much at all but I wasn't expecting Aiden to have so much trouble sleeping. He woke up a few hours after going down and tossed and turned in the bed with us all night long. We had to be up at 5am and I thought that time would never come but finally the alarm went off and we were off to the hospital. I felt very anxious on the drive over but I was doing better than I thought.

Once in our waiting area, we put on Aiden's superhero cape and let him play with some toys as a distraction to not want to eat since we could no longer give him anything. He was pretty happy looking at everything and didn't appear to be bothered by not eating.

Dr. Bauer came in at 7am and we were so excited to finally meet him in person! He looked at Aiden's nevus and explained that he would be sticking to what he told us originally. One expander would be placed in the abdomen and the other would be on his back. He was exactly how I expected him to be...AWESOME.

Fifteen minutes later, they brought us near the recovery room and showed us around so we would know what to do once surgery was over. They told us to stay there with Aiden until someone came to get him. I will never forget this. My heart was beating so fast and I could feel the tears backing up. I was holding Aiden and just like that, a lady came and took him from me. NO WARNING at all...I didn't even have a chance to tell him goodbye, kiss him or say I love you. I know that I would have cried my eyes out no matter what but this caused a serious breakdown. A very kind recovery nurse came up to me and started to tear up with me and told me she would be here with him when he got out and that everything was going to be fine.

After calming down a bit, Michael and I decided to head to the cafeteria for some breakfast. I wasn't really that hungry to eat but it actually helped settle by nerves and calm by tears down. By the time we headed back up to the waiting room, we had been told that he was in surgery and doing great. So there we sat waiting. I was pleasantly surprised how fast the time was going by. Before I knew it, Dr. Bauer was standing by the door waving us over. He told us Aiden did great and there were no complications. We talked briefly about how to care for him after surgery and then had a great general conversation about nevus in general. I can't say this enough...Dr. Bauer is beyond incredible. He is so invested in CMN and its very very very sincere.

It was only a few minutes after meeting with Dr. Bauer that we were called to the recovery room. We put on our recovery"uniform" and entered the room. We had been warned that he will most likely be screaming but I heard silence. I walked over to where he was and my heart dropped. He looked so sad laying there and I was dying to hold him. The nurse wasted no time getting him to me so I was thankful for that. He cried a little bit but eventually went back to sleep for about an hour.

The best birthday present I had...having him back in my arms.

After he was starting to wake up, we moved to our private room. He actually fell back asleep for awhile before he had anything to eat. He didn't seem very interested in eating so we tried Pedialyte to start out with. He seemed to do okay with it but he fell back to sleep. We tried some formula after this but all he wanted was 2 oz. I thought he would be more hungry than that but apparently the anesthesia was still wearing off. We thought that we might be able to go back to the hotel if he continued to do so well. All the nurses commented about how well he was doing.

Well unfortunately it didn't stay that way. Around 3pm was the changing point. He did take some baby food and some more formula but it was obvious that he was very uncomfortable. He had several outbursts of horrible screaming over the next several hours. It was heartbreaking to hear him cry like that. We knew at this point that we would be staying overnight. It was a very long night and Michael and I were exhausted. We took turns holding him since he didn't want to be put down. This was the only way either one of us was going to get any bit of sleep in.

Eventually the morning came and I was very relieved to see that Aiden was looking better already. We had our first dressing change and shortly after that we were ready to go. Aiden seemed very sensitive still when we picked him up or changed his drains but it was so much better than the day before. I was so glad that we were moving forward. I appreciate everyone who was there for me to push me through this because it certainly wasn't easy.

Here are some pictures from the day:

What the heck just happened to me MOM?

Daddy finally getting to hold Aiden!

Finally able to put him down for a bit .

Seriously Mom, I HATE these arm restraints!

Finally a SMILE

After we left the hospital, we went to Dr. Bauer's office to meet Mim, one of his AMAZING NURSES. Mim made us feel so much better about everything! She showed us a presentation on expanders and discussed what to expect over the next 12 weeks. She was also kind enough to do another dressing change with us since it happened so fast in the hospital. I was surprised that it didn't look as bad as I thought it would. There were not too many stitches and it looked great so far. Take a look for yourself....