The morning after

As I type, Maddie is sleeping peacefully. A very different child than what we were dealing with last night. My sister has deemed last night, "The worst night of her life." It was definitely hard and I was definitely not prepared, nor prepped by the doctors, for last night. I realize that she had open heart surgery, so obviously there is going to be some pain. I just assumed that they would be able to manage the pain with medication better than what happened.


I left the hospital at 6:30 PM to go home and give Ruthie her bath and tuck her in for bed. When I left Maddie was pretty comfortable and quiet. She would cry a little bit, but not much. When I was getting ready to head back to the hospital for the night, my sister called to tell me that Maddie had been sleeping for 10 minutes and then screaming for 10 minutes since about 7:00 PM. She suggested she stay with me the night. When I got to the hospital at 8:45 PM, Maddie was a complete mess. She had worked herself up to being so upset that she just couldn't calm down. On top of it all she would hiccup/sniffle from crying and it would hurt her, so the crying would begin all again. She would startle herself awake and freak out only to fall back asleep a minute later and startle herself back awake 30 seconds later, and forget that she had just woken up kind of thing. She was medicated, so most of this was happening with her eyes closed. She would occasionally open her eyes, but when she looked at me, I don't really think she even saw "Momma", I think she just saw some one there trying to comfort her. It was abut 5 hours of continual crying. Finally around midnight, after being up for almost 48 hours (not counting the 2 hours of sleep I got the night before the surgery), I decided to go and lay down in the back of the room. We had a nurse in her room all night, so any time she woke up she would go over and comfort her. I would wake up and ask if everything was OK and she would help calm her down and I would go back to bed. Maddie started to do some extended sleeping beginning about 1 AM until a little after 6 AM.

This morning at about 6:00 AM I really started seeing a more "normal" Maddie. She was reaching for her Ellie the Elephant and her pacifier, and most importantly, was interested in watching the Wiggles. She has all tubes and wires off of her face. The only tubes she has are her 2 chest tubes, her central IV line in her should, her arterial line in her wrist and and some other random line in her ankle. Who knows what that is for. They are beginning to switch her from morphine to Tylenol with codeine today. She has been taking pedilyte bottles all night. We had some throw up issues during a few coughing fits, but nothing that was out of the ordinary they said. I am hoping that she continues to be as peaceful and calm as she is right now throughout the rest of the day.

As you can see, she is looking great! With her chest covered up, you wouldst even know she had open heart surgery yesterday. Her Darth Vader breathing is so much better since all of the crying really cleared out her lungs.
These are our lovely accommodations at Vanderbilt Children's Cardiac Pediatric Critical Care Unit. Her doctor said we may be able to move up to the main floor today, but he didn't think there were any rooms available, so we may have to hang out here instead.

I'll continue to post as things unfold here. Thank you again for all of the prayers!