The New Belly Button!

Elodie had her g-tube surgery on Wednesday. Thankfully it went very smoothly. The procedure itself was about an hour. Elodie was her usual happy self while all of the nurses, doctors, and anesthetists examined her pre-op. 

Brian and I got some breakfast while she was actually in surgery, and by the time we were done it only took maybe 10 minutes before the surgeon came out to tell us how things went. She did need one small extra incision to help move her shunt catheter out of the way, but otherwise everything went just the way he wanted it to. We then got to meet her in recovery. Initially she was crying and very loopy, but after her pain medication kicked in she was pretty happy again. This girl is such a trooper! 

After about 30 minutes we were wheeled up to her floor. On the way there was a lot of excited chatter about Garth Brooks visiting the hospital to help open a new unit where kids and families can play together. As we waited for our elevator we saw a security officer get into an elevator holding Garth's black hat. Once we got onto Elodie's floor, we realized that Garth was visiting patients there. Sure enough, a woman stopped in our room and asked if we would be okay with him stopping in for a minute. Although we're not really country music fans, and I honestly couldn't name a single song of his, we couldn't really miss such an opportunity. He turned out to be extremely genuine and kind. He asked us about Elodie's health issues, commented on how beautiful she was, and wished her well. Elodie even got a little Garth Brooks teddy bear! I have to admit, the timing was a bit awkward considering that our daughter literally just came out of surgery and now suddenly we're posing for photos with a celebrity, but it will make for a fun story to tell her when she's older!

Elodie's hospital stay was pretty uneventful. She did have a short and anxiety-provoking episode of stridor overnight and when I paged the nurse to report that she was having trouble breathing, we got quite a rapid response! They brought respiratory medicine to come have a look at her and concluded that her airway was probably just a bit swollen and irritated from being intubated during surgery. After she had woken up a bit her breathing returned to normal and we both went back to sleep. We only needed to stay the one night. Since we had already been using a pump to feed her with the NG tube, there wasn't a whole lot of teaching I needed to learn how to use the g-tube. It's actually quite simple, and such an improvement from the NG! And after 5 days of using it, I have noticed a lot less reflux which is so nice because she always coughs and chokes on it when it doesn't come all the way up. Apparently the NG tube holds open the esophagus just a little and can exacerbate reflux, and that definitely seems to have been the case for her. 

So for now, life is back to normal and we're happy to have all of that over with! I am loving having her sweet cheeks tube and tape-free. They are oh so kissable!