Published on makchic.com Dec 2013
I’ve many things to be thankful for this year. I had a relatively smooth pregnancy, a hassle-free delivery and now, I’m a mother to two beautiful babies. I started writing this post a month from Christmas and I wanted to talk about inviting both sides of the family to celebrate Christmas at our house, giving gifts as a family and starting our own Christmas tradition.
However, my plans to write about our first Christmas as parents went out the window when we found out that our little baby boy needed surgery.
We brought the twins to their paediatrician for their first major vaccination recently. I had been fretting about it for weeks because I was concerned about them developing a bad reaction to the jab. Will it hurt? Will they have a fever? I prayed they’d still be able to sleep through the night because I’ve been enjoying my sleep.
The babies turned out fine, but I wasn’t ready for what came after. While checking my son, the paediatrician found that his groin area looked slightly swollen. It wasn’t red or anything, just a little engorged. He referred us to a paediatric urologist, who told us that our son had an inguinal hernia and needed surgery to correct it.
I’ve heard of hernias before, but baby hernia is something I’ve never heard of. I was told that it’s the most common surgery for babies. A surgery is still a surgery and my heart wasn’t ready for something like this. I remember just wanting to leave the doctor’s office so that I could cry. While feeding my son in the hospital’s waiting area, the tears made their appearance one by one.
I held in the tsunami of tears right until we got to the car. I had no idea I had so much tears. I’m not proud to admit this but I cried the entire day. Every time I looked at my son, I cried a little. When I read that he had to fast for five hours before the surgery, I cried again.
After I googled everything I could about hernias, I decided to have the surgery as soon as possible. Unfortunately, the doctor was going on leave so we had to wait until she got back. In the mean time, we made sure that our little warrior didn’t strain or cry too much because we didn’t want the hernia to become strangulated. A strangulated hernia stops blood from flowing to that area and part of the organ (usually the intestine) could die. And strangulated hernias mean that the pain starts too.
We scheduled the surgery for the Friday after the doctor came back from her leave, but on Sunday night, our baby boy’s hernia got strangulated. Fortunately, it was released shortly afterwards, but we were so traumatised by the event that we decided to bring the surgery forward.
I’m happy to say that everything went well. Neither baby nor I cried a single tear from the time we entered the hospital to going home. The surgery was done in the morning and my baby was back to normal by lunchtime. He didn’t seem to be in much pain and the incision site is almost unnoticeable.
The success of the entire procedure and my babies’ health are really my Christmas presents this year, and I will not wish for anything more ever again. It’s funny how our priorities have changed in a mere 365 days. I remember wishing to celebrate Christmas with a baby and by God’s grace, we’ve been blessed with two beautiful babies.
After all that, the thought of preparing and hosting Christmas lunch for both families doesn’t seem so stressful anymore.
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