The sweetest baby: Hannah's surgery

First off, thank you to my friends and family for all the thoughtful texts, phone calls and messages yesterday. It was definitely a nerve racking day for this Mama, and it made me tear up just reading all of your messages and knowing that we had so many people thinking of us.

A little background info for those of you who may not know; around 1 month old, we started noticing a large lump behind Hannah's right ear. Our pediatrician at the time kept brushing it off as nothing to worry about. Fast forward to our 9 month appointment; we found a new pediatrician for Hannah who strongly suggested we get it checked out at Seattle Children's Hospital.

During our consultation at Children's, the surgeon and his team felt very strongly that it was something called a Dermoid Cyst. It, apparently, is very common and almost always occurs behind the ear or around the eye...they were pretty confident with their assessment (and I was relieved to let go of my initial fears of something much worse). They suggested having it taken out however, because the longer you wait, the bigger it gets and the harder and more dangerous the surgery becomes. We scheduled the surgery and then we had 4 long weeks of worrying and waiting.

Yesterday, April 16th, we woke up early and headed to Seattle Children's Hospital for our check-in time of 6:30am. Hannah was tired and slightly cranky, since she couldn't have anything to eat past midnight. But once we were checked in everything seemed to go by so fast!

We were immediately whisked back to the triage room where we got Hannah wiped down and dressed in her hospital gown. The nurses came in a few times to try and get vitals, but my sassy girl was having none of that. She kept giving them "the eye" and turning around to try and crawl up me.

We met with several members of the surgery team, and despite being super nervous and anxious I felt really confident that I was putting Hannah into the best hands possible.

We had a few minutes of downtime before the surgery, so Hannah got to hang out with both her Grandma's who came along for support. She also got to open a "get well" My Little Pony present that my mom and I got her from Build-A-Bear. She loved it and started kicking her legs and giving her pony lots of kisses.

p.s. the end of this video is a good example of her "sass" when a nurse comes in and talks

Ten minutes before they wanted to take her back, they had us give her a liquid that would make her really loopy and sleepy...this was so that she would be calm and relaxed when they gave her the sleepy gas and IV for anesthesia. Poor baby girl was getting so tired...Noah got some really funny videos of her just giggling to herself but I was at "Mama bear" point and ready to burst into tears.

The surgery team came to get her and I definitely cried...though, I didn't make as much of a scene as I thought I would. One of the surgeons carried her Minnie Mouse blanket and stuffed animal for her so she could hold them in surgery...which was so sweet and super cute.

I snapped one picture of the team carrying her down the hall...and my heart broke a little bit watching her leave.

Next came the waiting....the surgery was quick and would only take about 45 minutes to an hour.

When I'm nervous or upset, I can't eat and I don't like to talk. So it was a long hour for me. Finally we got the beep that her surgery was done and the head surgeon came out to fill us in. He said she did great and he was able to remove the whole mass...which was about the size of a marble. He was still confident that it was a Dermoid Cyst, but decided to have it sent off to Pathology to be absolutely sure, which we should get the results of in about a week.

Noah and I were able to head back to a Post-Op room and wait for them to bring our sweet girl. When the nurse rounded the corner with my tiny baby in his arms, I almost lost it. She still had her IV in and she was SO tired and loopy and upset.....but she was good! I held her in my arms for an hour and let her sleep. She was having slight trouble breathing because the breathing tube during her surgery really irritated her throat...but the nurses said that was totally normal.

When she woke up, I fed her some juice and we were cleared to go!

For the rest of the day she's been on bed rest and fluids. She's a little trooper though...still smiley even though she's not feeling well...and always snuggly.

She has a few days of recovery ahead of her...but nothing super serious and she's doing so awesome already that I know these next days will be a breeze.