Surgery Results

Firstly I need to apologise to our readers for not updating you on the progress of Tahnee and her surgery results sooner. As you can appreciate we are both pretty tired so sleep has been our prerogative.

In my last post I said Tahnee had gone for surgery and that we would know more around lunch. Well at lunchtime we ran into someone who had been in the operating rooms. He said that although things were going well, Tahnee was still in theatre and would be an hour away. So we sat down to wait in the parents lounge attached to the NICU.

Just before 1pm the surgeon came in to speak with us. She said that the surgery hadn’t gone completely to plan. My heart just stopped at this stage! The plan had seemed simple – open her up, move the organs down, sew up the diaphragm and close her back up.

The surgeon explained that Tahnee’s abdominal cavity had failed to grow in-utero. Understandable when there were few organs down there to make it grow. Anyway, as a result of this, it is a tight place for the organs and the surgeon decided it was better to leave the bowel outside the body. This means that over the next week the doctors and gravity will slowly push the bowel back inside the body which will start to push her stomach out. And next week sometime Tahnee will go back into theatre to have the rest placed back inside.

The surgeon also told us that because she didn’t have much diaphragm on her left side due to the hernia, she was forced to use a patch and stitch this to Tahnee’s muscles and tissues. This patch does not grow; however, the muscles and tissue do, and will eventually cover the patch. Tahnee will be able to breath normally on her own, but when she is older she may have a few restrictions physically (eg. Can’t scuba dive) but will be able to play sports like any other child.

We were then allowed to go meet her portable bed coming back from surgery. It was definitely confronted seeing your daughter leave for surgery looking perfect on the outside (aside from the tubes) and coming back with a part of her internal organs on the outside. However, we count ourselves blessed as the baby in the cubicle next to us was born with an external organ, so we have been used to seeing that for the last few days!

Once Tahnee arrived back on Ward 6b (NICU), the staff worked to untangle the cords and transfer them back to her monitors. The consultant that has been assigned to us was concerned with her breathing on the ventilator and her stats (oxygen level, heart rate, blood pressure, carbon dioxide level and body temperature) and had sent someone to get the other type of ventilator, which is a bit gentler on her lungs. During this conversation the staff were still busy transferring the cords and plugs, when all of a sudden our consultant looked at the monitors and asked what had just been done to Tahnee. The staff responded by saying they were just moving her. And that simple act of moving her had helped her breathing and stats return to similar numbers as they were BEFORE the surgery, and the decision was made to leave her on the same ventilator! She is certainly living up to her name – it was only through God’s grace that his happened, and so quickly!

In the time between returning from surgery and now, Tahnee has been doing extremely well. The doctors have instructed the nurses to begin turning down her midazolam levels (sedative) and she has also had her morphine reduced. She is very stable and continues to amaze the doctors, nurses, medical staff and us.

The pink pinafore is covering her bowel in a bag

on a personal note, we have both spent the night in the parent accommodation next to the NICU. We managed to sleep fairly well. And as of now, we haven't heard that we need to vacate (priority is given to country parents and breastfeeding mums). It is very nice having a room to go back to, a place to escape and be by ourselves. We won't be staying indefinitely and will be back home at nights next week.

Also, my milk has come in and expressing has been going well. My colostrum and milk are being frozen and Tahnee will receive this once she starts to feed normally (after surgery next week). But ts hard getting used to the night feeding/expressing again, especially when they arent accompanied by snuggly newborn cuddles. As I've said before, these things will make our first cuddle even more special :)