Now we wait

Whew. What a day.

I am sitting in my room at the lovely Residence Inn, having a beer and trying to unwind from a very stressful day. Abby is sleeping in the big king size bed, surrounded by chairs and pillows. She looks so tiny.

Our day started at 7:30 this morning. Well, to be honest, it actually started at 3 this morning, when Abby decided it would be a good time to wake up and play. I tried to get her back down, but it was clear that she was having none of it. So I just decided to go with the flow. I brought her out into the living room and piled up some of her favorite toys. Grammy joined us around 4am, and we all laid on the floor and played until about 4:45. Fun!

It was a mad rush getting everything ready to go before we left. My step-dad Pat went and got us some coffee, and Mom watched Abby while I got dressed. Then I fed Abby, got us packed, ran Lily over to doggy day care, and tried to not completely lose it. We made it out the door by 9:30 and had an uneventful, albeit LOUD, ride to Chapel Hill. Abby was exhausted but she refused to fall asleep in the car. Well... that's not entirely true. She did stop crying and close her eyes for seven minutes.

We got to the hospital at noon, found some food, and waited. And waited. Aaaaaand waited.

And then we waited some more. For 2 hours.

Here's Abby and me, the headless mannequin, waiting:


Abby was amazing the whole time, hardly fussing at all. We finally got to see the surgeon's associate, who ran us through the standard pre-op questions. Our actual surgeon came in a bit later to review any last minute questions and concerns, then it was off to the pre-op testing and education area. Where, in keeping with the theme of the day, we waited a bit more.

At this point I began to lose my patience. We had been there for hours, Abby hadn't slept, and we were all exhausted.

The last thing on our agenda was to get Abby's blood drawn. Back at the surgeon's clinic, in anticipation of the blood draw, a nurse had put some numbing cream on her arms and covered it up with a clear, sticky bandage. Bad idea. The worst part of the whole thing was not actually drawing the blood, but removing that damn bandage. It took a layer of skin with it. Nice.

4:15 and we were finally out of there. We made it back to the hotel a little before 5 and Mom gave Abby a bath with some special anti-bacterial soap. She was so tired that after a bottle and some nursing (I'm not producing enough to breastfeed her exclusively anymore), she went right to sleep.

Now I'm sitting here on this stiff, ugly couch, eating cold pizza and drinking beer out of a plastic cup. My back hurts, my head hurts, and I can't wait for this to be over.

The surgery is set for 7:30 tomorrow morning. I'll post updates as I can. In the meantime, I'm going to watch Knocked Up and try to get some sleep.