We’re Home!!

Shewww, what a stressful day!  But it’s over, and we’re home, and everything went SO well!  Better than I ever could have asked for.  We got there and had our consultations with his Urologist, the Nurse, and the Anesthesiologist.  They explained everything that they were going to do, a lot of it depended on what they found once they got in there, so they told us the surgery would last anywhere from 1-3 hours and they would evaluate him afterwards to determine whether he could come home or not.  They put him to sleep and gave him a spinal block so he felt absolutely no pain, they did the scope and found that his tubes were nice and open, so he has a big passageway leading from his kidneys through his ureters, so the procedure they had planned on doing there wasn’t needed!  Then, they inserted dye through a catheter and watched it fill up his bladder and added pressure to see if his kidney’s would suck the dye up…but nope…they performed just as they should and he didn’t have any kidney reflux!!  This is such a huge answer to prayer because if there was still reflux that would have been cause for a more extensive surgery down the road.  His ureters that used to be coiled and did not function properly are now straight and seem to have formed into perfectly working ureters!  Ryder’s little body has been hard at work growing and strengthening and getting everything to catch up and work together as it should.

He handled everything so well.  He’s such a strong little boy and I am completely in awe of him.  The way that he faces things with such ease and courage is really admirable.  Mommy needs to take some lessons! 

I woke him up at 5:15 am to have a bottle since this was the latest time he’d be able to eat prior to surgery.  So he ate and went back to sleep.  I gave him some juice at 9:30 since they said he could have clear liquid 4 hours before surgery.  Needless to say, he was pretty hungry by the time we got to the hospital.  We got on the elevator with a Doctor and he reached over and grabbed the Doctors coffee cup!!  He wanted a drink!  When we got to the place of his surgery all of the nurses were passing him around (they remembered him from his 1st surgery), and he bounced on his kidney doctors knee for a while, I love that hospital, they are all so amazing.  They said he did great during surgery, it only took 1 hour, and he woke right up from the anesthesia (doesn’t surprise me, he always likes to know what’s going on!), I heard them telling another mother that it took her son 1.5 hours to wake up from the anesthesia!  I’m trying to ignore the little tiny red spots on his face that are evidence to me that he was crying pretty hard back there at some point…by the time they brought him to me he just looked groggy and a little puffy, but he reached for me and I fed him a bottle of water in his recovery room while he grabbed a handful of my hair and rubbed his eyes with it.  Mommy’s hair is always in his face which I’ve always thought must be pretty annoying, but today I realized how comforting it was for him.  

So the final verdict is that he’s all better!  The only part of his urinary tract that has suffered any kind of permanent damage is his bladder, it has bands of muscle around it from being so dilated and stretched out while I was pregnant with him when he had the blockage.  But that just means we’ll have a harder time potty training him, which I can deal with!  He doesn’t have to see his kidney doctor again until he’s 1 yr old for a sonogram.  And in 1 month he even gets to stop taking his medicine!!  It will be like nothing was ever wrong!  We will continue seeing the kidney doctor through his potty training years, but don’t foresee anymore problems arising with his kidneys or ureters or any of it!  God is so good to us, He hears our prayers and answers them, He comforts us and gives us strength, and has truly blessed us with this sweet baby boy!

Some pictures from our day:

Can’t we just stay home and watch TV?!

Getting ready to leave, had to take a picture of my twins!  

Walking into the hospital                                                              

Mommy, Daddy, & Baby – Matching bracelets

 Playing in the wagon in the waiting room 

In the recovery room, getting ready to leave

 So happy to be getting on the elevator heading out of there!

 In the car, snuggled up with Blaize (who even got to go back to surgery with Ryder!) 

He was asleep by the time we got out of the parking garage!  We said bye-bye to the hospital for good…well…until baby #2 that is! 

Oh, and while we were at the hospital, we stopped by the NICU so he could visit all the nurses who took care of him!  They were so excited to see him and couldn’t believe how big & healthy he looked (especially since he had just come out of surgery!)

So happy this day is over, and so happy with the outcome.  Thanks to all who were praying for us and thinking of us!