Resting

Well, Elijah came out of surgery and everything went well.  He does not come out of anesthesia very well, and knowing that he has to lay still on his back for 5 hours in recovery, they will often give the kids some sedation so they will rest.

As soon as we wheeled Elijah up to his recovery area, he went nuts! It took about four of us to hold him down and he kept kicking the brace off of his leg.

As we were holding him down, the nurse looks up at the anesthesiologist and asks, "Didn't you give him anything??"

He replied, "Yes. Lots."

Whatever they gave him was no match for Elijah! I climbed into a bed with him and nursed him. That calmed him down for about 15 min. The nurse brought a DVD player with Elmo videos. That worked for about 7 minutes. I was able to hold him and got him to sleep. He laid on me for about an hour. Finally, we tried the stroller, which really helped. We could gently rock him back and forth as long as we didn't go too far (since he was still hooked up to machines), and we had to keep him flat.

He is already having some more side effects than last time. He has thrown up a couple of times and doesn't seem to have an appetite. We've given him the first of his three medications-this one is anti-nausea medicine. He didn't need it last time, but he was so young then, and was only breastfed.  So. We are very thankful that when we moved our flight, I requested a day for recovery. I think he will need it.

We plan to lay low and take good care of Elijah and then we will be anxious to return to the rest of our crew.