After consulting with our wonderful Dr. Marcus (Ella’s pediatrician) and getting her on a high dose of appropriate pain medication things have come back under control, amazingly. We hady two-three days when we thought (or I thought) we’d go bezerk, now it seems back to “business-as-usual” almost. Today (Saturday) Ella slept for the first time during the day. She had her usual two and a half hour nap and didn’t even cry when I put her down (although she did when I took her out of bed). Finally, Wednesday, she slept the whole night but not before we tried Dr. Spock’s method that originally worked on Netta. We put her down in bed once she was unbearably tired, whining and crying and just let her cry. We closed the door and I timed her screaming. She kept up for 50 minutes! We could barely stand it, but we knew that she had to go to sleep. At this point she had already been on codeine/tylenol supositories that we got custom made for her) for 24 hours. I felt there was nothing more we could do and was just hoping that she would eventually doze off. It worked! She did fall fast asleep and slept the whole night. Sleep is so important for her recovery. Since then, she’s just getting a little better every day.
Now we’ve halved the codeine/tylenol and she seems to be doing well. The swelling is slowly (very slowly) going down and Ella is returning to her old self. She even fed herself tonight with the usual fare: cheeze and pears. She still is a bit on the cranky side but we can do some things with her which makes a big difference. When she was really in pain all she wanted to do was watch video after video. This afternoon we did some walking to music.
Ella gets tired quickly but she’s good for a few cross-livingroom strolls. Well we sure have learned alot about this process and will be much more prepared for the ordeal of part B of her surgery coming up.