The day (Friday the 13th) started out smoothly. G, Papa and I got up at o-dark-thirty (read in the 5s). We made it to the surgery center on time. We signed in and G received her ankle bracelet (ID tag) and we only waited for a small amount of time before we were called back for G to be weighed and measured. She weighed in at a whopping 28.4 pounds. We were given a small pre-op room where we watched Curious George, talked with the nurses, met with the doctor to discuss if we had any other questions about the tubes that G was about to receive, daddy showed up before the procedure, the anesthesiologist explained just for me how he would be taking care of my precious baby, and then they gave us the yellow gown to put on G. At this point we didn't know just how important that gown would become, but we were soon to find out.
The surgery went smoothly. None of us shed a tear when they took her back. I did tell the nurses just to carry her because they kept offering to let her walk (which I knew she wouldn't) or ride on the rolling bed (G could not quite grasp why they thought the bed would move. Beds don't roll at our house.). They were in and out of G's ears in fifteen minutes and no sooner had we gotten comfortable in the waiting room, then they were bringing me back to see my baby.
Now the nurses had warned us that G would either be a happy snuggly "drunk" after the anesthesia or a mean drunk. I was expecting the worst just to be safe, but when we came to the door of her post-op room she was not crying and was sweetly snuggling with the nurse. When she saw me she wanted her Mama so the nurse handed her over and still not a tear. She just wanted to snuggle, but she did whimper off and on, which was almost my undoing. I started to tear up, but quickly stopped that because I didn't want to upset her. We snuggled under a warm blanket for a while, they brought G some juice and crackers and she was doing so well that we were told that we could go whenever. We decided that we were ready to go, but that we needed to change G out of her yellow hospital gown and into her snowman PJ shirt. That is when things took a turn for the worst. G went from snuggly baby to hopping mad. She was NOT about to hand over that yellow hospital gown. It was hers. She had earned the right to keep it. We were NOT going to take it from her. I should add that Papa did tell us that we should just let her keep it, but being the "novice" and responsible parents we knew the gown wasn't ours and needed to stay so we pried it off of her and barely got her writhing screaming body back into her PJs. I am not making that up. She was SO VERY MAD. Irrationally mad. Gotta love anesthesia. She was throwing such a fit that the anesthesiologist came in to check on his previously mild mannered and sweet patient. When he learned that she just wanted the gown, he quickly said that it was hers and handed it to her. She clutched that gown to her tightly and did not let it go, but that did not stop the tears. My poor baby was done. She was ready to leave. She was tired, confused, drugged and just wanted to go home. So we did. Papa drove us home and she held onto that gown and did not let it out of her sight all morning. She did finally quit crying when we got home and she did snuggle a bunch more. She was kind of funny to watch when she tried to walk for that first hour-very wobbly, but otherwise she was once again my mild-mannered laid back baby. As long as we let her hold her bright yellow hospital gown.
All and all the day went really smoothly, but if you ever take your child to get tubes in their ears and they hand him or her a yellow hospital gown. Beware. It may be more important than you think.
