December 8 Update- Night Before the Surgery

Carrick is doing well. He is set to have his hernia surgery tomorrow unless something crazy and unforeseen happens. I feel like there have been a few setbacks on the road to this operation and I am still a little nervous that we will get ourselves to the hospital in the morning and something will have come up. But, most likely everything will be just fine. Just a re-cap: this surgery is to (finally) fix the hernia in Carrick's scrotum. It actually showed up when he was about four weeks old but since he was on the ventilator and in such fragile condition, the doctors told us we would wait until Carrick was older and doing much better. A hernia surgery is the most routine surgery they perform on preemies and full term babies. Basically, a pretty sizeable piece of Carrick's intestine has "fallen" through an open canal in his scrotum. All boys have this canal in the womb but it normally closes after birth. His didn't and it has grown as he has grown; so when we left the hospital and saw Carrick's various doctors, they would always take off his diaper and gasp in shock. Then they would look at Will and I and say, "Do you know he has a hernia?1?" It always made us laugh. We warned them! It was in the discharge papers! We changed his diaper everyday! So now it's finally going be repaired. We are excited- we're tired of looking at it. We will arrive at the hospital at 9:00 a.m. and the surgery is scheduled for 11:00. I'm not sure how long it will take, but it should probably not be more than an hour. He'll probably have to stay overnight because he has breathing issues and they may decide they want to watch him. It may not happen; he may be allowed to go home the same day, but Will and I are packing an overnight bag just in case. We will update the blog again tomorrow evening to let everyone know how he's doing. Poor Carrick- he can't have any food after midnight tonight. No breakfast for the baby. Which is sad, because breakfast is usually one of his best meals. And then he will have an hour and a half car ride home from the hospital with sore little boy parts. I'm sure you can imagine how uncomfortable it would be to be strapped into a car seat after an operation in such a delicate place. We will have tylenol to tide him over. On a more fun note: Carrick had his first four ounce bottle yesterday! He has never been able to get that far, but Sunday was a good eating day. He made it to four! He was supposed to do that awhile ago, but he's refused flat out. This makes Will and I so excited! He is also thisclose to sitting up by himself. I can pull him up to a sittiing position and just barely hold him by his elbows. I really think he may be able to sit alone for a few minutes by Christmas. Don't get your hopes up family- just know Carrick and I are going to practice real hard! He has also crossed the fourteen pound mark and he has to be twenty-four inches long because he is too long now for his three month footie pajamas. Exciting things! More to come.