Follow up at LGI

Follow up appointment went really well, the pigeon chest is apparently perfectly normal, her incision is perfect, her heart and lungs and fluid free and working as they should so they have said we can stop giving her the Amoxicillin, both specialists said "see you in 3 months, have a nice summer!" They are quite certain her breathing is respiratory and not related to her heart, probably floppy throat which she should grow out of but im still not convinced..

Pigeon Chest?!

I took Hannah to doctors on Friday because i wasnt happy with her breathing, the Doctor couldnt find anything wrong but gave me Amoxicilin for her just incase she was starting with a cold/chest infection.



Then i was undressing her yesterday AM for a photoshoot in her new blanket that my Auntie Avril sent and she now has a pigeon chest and still no improvement with her breathing! It was quite alarming to see her chest bone humped up like that, i burst out crying and panicked, Dad and Steve both came out of work and came racing home and we ran her up to Pinderfields Hospital which is our closest A&E the just shrugged it off and said it was fairly common for the breastbone to do that following heart surgery and just kept us in for observations and continued her amoxicilin, its her follow up appointment tomorrow at LGI so i will be asking further questions about why there is no improvement in her breathing.

Weaning and Wheezing

Well all seems to be going well, she is not quite her happy contented self yet but her appetite has increased, just started weaning and she seems to love it, chest seems to be healing well and her regular calpol seems to do the trick but her breathing is still very noisy, will be asking why at her checkup on Thursday

Bestest Big Sister

Well we are finally back home after Hannahs heart operation and Emily has been such a good girl, im sure she probably had her moments while i was gone but for the best part she has been a little star while staying at Nanna & Grandad's, they are fantastic with her and know her so well its easier for them to distract her, i dont know what i would do without them, i know the last 6 weeks would have been impossible without their help.

Emily is very pleased Hannah is ok now and that we are all home, we were sat watching TV last night and she said "Mum, is it nice to be normal again?" hehe bless her.  Hannah is also very pleased to see her very funny and entertaining big sister, she loves to sit in her low chair watching Emily's antics.

Its been scorching hot today, we went to town to hunt for some jelly bean sandals for Emily like Hannahs new ones and found the perfect pair, just the same style but with Peppa Pig on! Perfect!

Going Home!

Finally home! She passed all tests with flying colours this morning, no complications and no medication appart from Calpol, absolubtly thrilled, she is so brave, We have 2 very happy little girls!

It was awfull holding her down this morning for her dressings off and her stitches out! The nurse was a bag of nerves trying to be gentle but the longer it went on the more upset me and Hannah got, i came over a bit funny and had to sit down i just wanted them to stop upsetting her, im so glad its all over!!

High Dependency Unit

Hannah has been moved from Intensive Care to the high dependancy unit on the ward, she is still under 24 hour observation but she is doing so well
She was so pleased to see us when we arrived this morning and gave us a fabulous smile!

Progress

Had a very good day today, Hannah has been off all morphine and sedatives since 6am and has been coping well, she has taken two bottle feeds today which i thoroughly enjoyed giving her as i got to have a cuddle, nearly all wires are out now appart from her chest drain, a canular in her foot but nothing going in it and a tube ...up her nose for feeding but has not been required yet :0)

Operation Day!

We were up late last night bathing Hannah in this special stuff that she has to be washed in before her operation and i was leaving her feed till as late as possible as she has to be starved 6 hours before the operation so wont get chance to have breakfast and i didnt want her upset and hungry if the operation was delayed for any reason.


The surgeon and the anethatist spent time with us sepratly yesterday evening explaining the ins and outs and the worst case scenarios and it was so scary!

Nanna came up first thing in the morning to see Hannah before she had to go down and was to spend the day with me and Steve trying to keep us busy, when the time came i carried Hannah down to theatre myself and held her on the operating bed while they held the gas mask over her face to send her to sleep, i was crying all over her, iv never been so upset in my entire life her lovely little eyes rolled as the gas took effect and she fell to sleep with her eyes still open and we were ushered out of the room.
I clung so hard to her dummy my hand was hurting, none of us knew what to say to make the other feel better so we just got on with moving our things from the cubicle to our outside accomodation that the hospital put you up in so you have a base and somewhere to nap.
Then mum finally convinced us to go for a little walk in Leeds but not too far from the hospital, it was a waiting game and could take up to 6 hours so we decided to be posative and go and buy Hannah a load of new outfits for when she was better.
After about 3 hours of trying in vain to distract ourselves we decided to go back to the room and have a cup of tea and just as we were half way through our drinks my phone went! I dived on it straight away and a nurse said "Can you come to ward 4 please the surgeon would like to speak to you", i said "Is she ok? is she there already?" she just repeated that the surgeon would like to speak to us... Talk about panic! we half ran to the main building and up the lift and burst into ward 4 (ICU) and asked to wait in a small waiting room and he would come to see us.

I cant tell you how releived i was when he came in with a smile on his face to tell us the operation had gone fantastically, she had coped extremely well and the repair had been a sucess, i couldnt hold back the sobs and just wanted to see her straight away but we had to wait as she had litterally only just been brought back up and they needed to sort stuff out before we could see her.
My poor little baby was laid there under a mass of wires and tubes with things beeping and making noises and she was a bit bloated and iv never felt so useless and helpless in my life!

Get well soon..

Emily has just been writing a get well card for hannah to open at hospital, obviously to us its just squigly lines but she told me what it says, it says "Hannah, go to the doctors and dont be fraid, come home get well soon, love from Emily kiss kiss" I love my girls so much!

Thats Rude

Me and Emily were watching "Humf" this morning and Humf and Walice were smelling flowers, Humf said "oo that smells nice!", Walice smelt one that looked like a weed and said "Err that one smells awful!"

Emily looked at me and said, "Walice shouldnt say that should he mum?", "why not darling?", "because its rude!"
I had to explain that because flowers dont have feelings they dont get upset by such things hehe bless her.

Here we go

The hospital have rung, Hannah is booked in for 13th, operation will be 14th, have to ring ward before we set off to make sure no emergencies have taken up her bed, also need to make sure she dont catch any colds etc in the mean time so the quaranteen continues but at least we have a date now ..



I dont know how i feel to be honest, part of me wants to pack a bag and run away with her so i can just keep her as she is forever without all this scary stuff but the other part of me knows it needs to happen for her to be healthy and i want it done 2 hours ago..

Im so scared!

Disumpointed!

At the supermarket today we got to the checkout and Emily looked out of the windows and told me it was nearly bedtime. I was a bit confused because it was only about 3pm and was looking at the windows trying to work out what had given her that idea. After a little while i realised that the top two rows of windows are tinted to stop glare so i pointed it out and explained to her. She said all forelone "oh mum, im so disum pointed when i get it wrong!" *pout*

Mud Pies!

Emily got a bit bored in the garden today so i decided to show her how to make a variation of mud pies with her play sand. I dont know who enjoyed it most, i felt like a big kid again and Emily was amazed by the whole idea!
A bit of sand here, a twig and a handfull of grass there, a few pink pettals from grandads bush and a leaf on top, now 40mins in the play oven on gas mark 5!

She absolubtly loved it, putting them in the oven turnign the nobs then getting themback out again hehe, it was great fun!

Bye Bye William, Hello Girls!

I noticed when i brought William in last night his eye looked a little cloudy and decided id would check on him this morning, but when i got him out his eye didnt look too bad but i had kind of decided he may have been a mistaken purchase as it is hard to introduce boys to each other as they are territorial and what would happen if we went out and bought another boy only to find they didnt get on!

So i decided to take William back, however stupid i looked in the shop and admit i had been very childish and got carried away and shouldnt have bought him as we wanted 2 girls. Lucky for me however the girl in the shop saved me any of the embarasment because as soon as she saw me she said "ah i expected i might see you today, is it his eyes? both his brothers are blind with it this morning!" She took him out of the box, decided he did have it too and offered me a full refund, i felt so guilty watching her take William to the back room, he was peeping at me over her shoulder! boohoo!

Emily was amazing about the whole thing, most kids would kick would get upset and kick off about the prospect of taking there new pet back to the shop but she just trusted that when i said we would replace him that i would.

So after a crazy day racing around everywhere we finally found two gorgeous girls at Barnsley Pets @ Home and snapped them up straight away before anyoen else could get them, EMily has called them Ruby and Ci Ci and loves them both so much!

William

For the longest time now Emily's highlight of the week has been visiting pets at home to see the Guinea Pigs, iv nearly relented once or twice but decided i had enough on my plate with the dogs, fish, parrot, lizard and steeled myself against getting yet more hassle.

Well a few weeks ago i off-loaded my fish to Shell and Marie bought my fish tank off me last week so that is one responsibility down and i did the impulse thing and decided we would get a Guinea Pig but once i had decided i wanted it like 2 hours ago.

So we jumped int he car realising it was Sunday we only had 40mins to play with so deciding we didnt have time to shop around for cheaper, went straight to Pets @ Home.

When we got there they only had 3 Guinea Pigs, all boys which was dissapointing as Emily wanted a girl one she could call Ruby but i explained this was all they had and we could either get one of these or we would have to go shopping tomorrow and try and find a girl one.

Anyway in the end we decided to buy the cutest one out of the three which was a tri-coloured one with very scruffy ears and a black smudge on his nose, he was super cute and Emily decided to call him William. I would have liked to get him a friend too but the other two were both white with red eyes which i hate and one of them had his eye glued shut!

After racing home, Steve built the hutch and sorted out the bedding, Emily had a lovely cuddle and then we happily put William to bed.

After Emily went to bed i checked the weather outside and felt bad for William having no one to cuddle up to so i brought him in the house in an old mouse cage till we could buy him a companion.