5/26 Day after surgery

Today was a good day for Stephen Jr. He stayed comfortable for most of the day. During my morning visit I got really upset although I didn't tell the nurse I was. When we got there his lip was all crusty and his suction tube was stuck to his lip! So I told her about it and told her to clean it off and when she did it wouldn't come all the way off and she said that if she tried to get the rest of it off it would tear his lip and she didn't want to make him bleed...like really! How hard is it to check my baby and moisten his lips every other hour? I know it is not completely her fault I also blame the night nurse because the crust on his lips were so thick it was obviously neglect or over looking from both shifts. So after she wet his lips he started moving his cute little tongue and sucking his suction tube. He loves sucking that thing and it is too adorable. I also had a little emotional breakdown of tears right after that because he was bringing his legs up to his chest and quivering and you could tell he was obviously in some pain and his heart rate went up a bit. I can't stand seeing my little baby in pain. So I told the nurse that he was in pain so she gave him a bolus of his Fentanyl for pain. It kicked in a few minutes later and he closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

I really liked his night nurse tonight, but happy his nurse in the morning who really likes him and requested to be his primary nurse when she is working is there tomorrow. She talks to him and rubs him and really takes good care of him when his Daddy and I are not there, so that is a really nice comfort for the both of us. I overheard a respiratory specialist saying how surprised she was and how great he was doing for a CDH baby because he has 2 lobes of his left lung and how she wanted to extubate  him tomorrow. It is mostly common for CDH babies to only have 1 lobe, so Stephen has been extremely fortunate so far. His night nurse told us though that the respiratory specialist are faster to extubate and the surgeons and doctors are a little slower and they sometimes bump heads on how fast they take away the breathing assistance. But Stephen is doing really good but they need to manage his pain first and they kinda forget that he just had surgery yesterday and still has to deal with the pain so it would be the best to leave him on another day or two because the pain medication cause respiratory distress. I am so anxious to see when those tubes come out so we can see his entire face. Tonight when I left he was really comfortable and sleeping great.