Post-operative.

Eliot came through the tube placement surgery just fine.

I'm fairly sure today was the first day in his life when Mom and Dad got up in the morning before he was awake. We had to report to the out-patient surgery office at 6:25. As fretful as I was about the surgery beforehand, it was nothing compared to the nervousness I felt this morning. I felt the same as if I would be undergoing the procedure myself--upset stomach, nerves jangling. I almost threw up this morning brushing my teeth. I've honestly never felt that level of anxiety on behalf of someone else before. I guess it's really because in a way, Eliot isn't "someone else" to me. He feels like a part of me still, and probably always will. Yeah, I know. That's original isn't it?! Your child feels like part of you? Really? But I swear, I've been shocked and partly dismayed to learn since becoming a parent that every cliche I've ever heard about parenthood and babies is absolutely true. EVERY single one.

But anyway...

It scared the hell out of me for Eliot to be given Versed, known fondly to those in the medical biz as "the liquid hammer." Even though I knew it would make everything easier for him and his doctor and nurses. Soon after taking the medicine, he started to get groggy and loopy, grinning and giggling at the nurses where before he had turned shyly away and burrowed his face into my neck. They came to take him back into the operating room, and I wasn't sure I could walk out of pre-op and back into the waiting room without wilting into the floor. But I did.

Less than fifteen minutes later, the doctor was back to tell us that he was finished and everything had gone fine. Eliot was starting to wake up already and was drinking a bottle.

This was my first clue that he wasn't himself, because we hadn't brought a bottle with us to the hospital (he only takes them before bedtime now), and he absolutely, vehemently refuses to drink from any bottle but the ones at home with the discontinued Playtex nipple design. (Damn Playtex and their discontinued, hard to get nipples!!!) So I knew he was out of his mind.

Sure enough, by the time we made it back to get him (relief literally flooding through me as the nurse transferred him into my arms), he was starting to really get angry. He laid in my lap as limp and uncoordinated as a blob of jelly dripping off a biscuit, but managed to work up the muscle strength to fling the bottle and his pacifier across the room and begin to flail his arms around wildly, smacking me in the head repeatedly.

To make a long story, let's face it, not that much shorter, he was severely pissed off at me and Eli for the rest of the morning. Screaming, hitting, throwing himself in the floor. Finally, after about thirty years of this, he fell asleep on my lap on the couch. I snuggled him a bit before transferring his limp little body to his crib, and then he slept for three. hours. straight.

And woke up his charming, sweet, calm, collected self.

Welcome back, buddy. :-)