..and all through the house, everyone was running in circles except Aleck, sleeping peacefully in his crib.
So we may be a little nervous about tomorrow, and I can only speak for myself when I say that it’s less about the surgery itself and more about the anesthesia. He’s so tiny. With his full leg cast on he weighs 8lbs, 14 oz, and tomorrow we’ll find out just how little he is without the cast on. The biggest concern is will his size affect his reaction to the anesthesia. It’s not like he’s having open heart surgery, but at this age and to be this little any surgery still needs to be treated as a big deal. We tried to “fatten” him up as much as we could over the last two weeks but that’s only resulted in a crazy cycle of on demand feeding and very sore nipples. Early Intervention sent us a nutritionist, I’m guessing based on how small he is, and we had our first meeting today. With breast feeding alone there aren’t too many things we can do to pack on the pounds, and I honestly found that reassuring. In the back of my head there has been the loudest nagging that the reason he’s little is because I’m not feeding him enough. For a new mom, totally clueless and overwhelmed, that’s a horrible feeling. The idea that I’m depriving him in some way, that everytime he cries I’m not just whipping out the boob, well, I can see why Jewish moms love to overfeed their offspring. The nutritionist was sweet and gave me some good guidance for positioning, timing, angles, and in general just reassuring me that things are going better than I think, which is a huge weight off my shoulders.
Now, the speech pathologist stuck her finger in Aleck’s mouth to see how is sucking and latching is going, looked me straight in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t want to stick my nipple in his mouth.” He latched onto her finger so quickly and so tightly, she had to force it out. Yup, no problems there either. She did give me some things to look out for, audible sucking means he’s taking in air, and I can put my finger under his chin to help elongate him so he takes the milk in more efficiently. The best part of the entire meeting however, was him looking at her after his feed, making noises, making faces, and flirting like the little charmer he’s becoming. At 13 weeks he’s becoming more like a little Persin and less like this foreign creature in my house, I honestly feel like we are really starting to get to know each other and that’s an amazing feeling. He smiles, he coos, and he carries on full conversations with his daddy while getting his diaper changed, the highlight of his day.
And even better, he’s been sleeping through the night. We’ve had 4 nights in a row of 7 or more hours of consecutive sleep. It’s amazing. It’s probably what’s held our sanity together during all of this. Of course I’m bracing myself for all of that to change after the surgery. There’s no way of knowing how he’s going to feel and how long it’ll take him to feel like himself again. Then next week he’s getting fitted for a splint for his chest and shoulders that he’ll wear to sleep in, so that will probably be another adjustment period for his sleep schedule. Guess I better enjoy this last moment while I still have it.
We have to be at the hospital at 6am tomorrow, the surgery is at 7:30AM. Most likely Aleck and I will be staying overnight so they can observe him. So please wish us luck as I’m going to grab my last few hours of sleep for the next 36 or so hours.