Surgery Day- July 19th

Harper needed to fast from 2am so I woke her up for a feed at 1.30am and put her back to bed. At 4am she woke up and wanted another feed to help her back to sleep, after 30 mins of grumbling Pete (Daddy) put her in her carseat and took her for a drive to get her back to sleep, at 5.30 they come back inside and Harper is wide awake and playing.

The grandparents arrive at 6am to look after Paxton who was still fast asleep. We leave at 6.30am, leaving plenty of time to get to the hospital for our 7.15am appointment. Unfortunately there were several accidents that morning causing traffic chaos all over the city. We called to let the hospital we would late and arrived at 7.45am.

Once at the hospital we were whisked off into a private room to talk to the anaesthesist, then taken back into a large room where Harper was given some Panadol and something to make her "drunk". The main anaesthesist and the plastics team was there to talk to us. Once the meds had started to kick in we were taken to a waiting room in the operating wing where we put on her gown and waited for her to be taken back. The anaesthesist came and spoke to us again and our surgeon came past to touch base before the surgery.

At 8.30am it was time to start. I carried her back to a small room where I laid her down on a big bed on top of a heated air matress. They put the mask over her face and she went to sleep. I said goodbye and we were led to the waiting room.

At 2.30pm, 6 hours later the surgeon called us to let us know that she was out of surgery and tha everything went perfect. He said in about 30mins we would be called back to recovery to see her. 2 hours later at 4.30pm we were finally paged to recovery. Harper was having a cuddle with one of the nurses who told us that she had been very unsettled so she sat down and held her. They passed her to me and we had a cuddle. She had a central line in her groin connected to a morphine pump and a drip, an IV in her hand, an IV in her foot and a cathetar. Her oxygen levels were a little low so they also put some nasal prongs on her. transfered her.

After about 30 minutes she was transferred up to the ward. We were given a single room painted with an Aladin theme.

Harper was getting 1ml of Morphine every hour and had an extra 1ml twice in the first day, she was also getting panadol and antibiotics. She was sleeping most of the day except for approx. 15min intervals every few hours.

We were on the other side!!!