20??? More like 2!

Avie had surgery two days ago. The surgeon was so happy with everything. He said the surgery went smoothly. The distal (lower) bowels were completely empty and he was able to stitch her right back up without any complications. A little while later, she was back in her NICU room, coming down off the anesthesia. She had all those damn tubs back in. Luckily, the oxygen tube came out a couple of hours later and she was breathing on her own. Even though she was asleep and still "out of it" from the surgery, she was squeezing the crap out of our fingers with her little hand. The recovery process from this is going to be similar to her last surgery. There is a replogle tube in her nose that is sucking bile out of her tummy and her bowels have to wake up before she can eat. They will start her on small amounts of food and keep a close eye to make sure it's passing through as it should. Then they increase the food in small amounts, very slowly, until she is up to full feedings. After that, it's just messing with her 'diet' to make sure she is maintaining weight gain and has the right amount of fat, salt, etc. This part will be what we take home with us as her daily recipe- her CF meal plan if you will. The good news so far is that the bile coming out of her tummy is clear already. It actually was never green (if you recall from the first surgery, this bile started out as a dark green and we needed it to be clear- meaning the bowels were awake). The nurses and doctors are also hearing "bowel sounds" when they listen to her stomach. This is good because it obviously means that things are waking up down there. The surgeon told us that the first thing to go through her bowels will be gas... and boy did the nurse and I smell it yesterday! My little sewer pipe* The surgeon also said that it takes some kids up to 20 days for the bowels to wake up before they can eat.... so, Avie is kicking ass with this farty, gurgle, clear bile thing just the day after surgery! I'm excited to see what today brings! It might just be moving her replogle tube off suction and to using gravity alone... then feeding should happen soon! My little girl is a Firecracker and she is ready to blow this popsicle stand! *When the nurse would flush her mucus fistula (the stoma that connected to the distal bowel), we would smell an eggy gas coming out of the stoma. I called it her sewer pipe, because that's what it smelled like. Stinky girl!

#CFMommy