Tyler's two major surgeries

My baby boy Tyler is now 2 1/2 and I am finally going to tell everyone about his surgeries. Some time I will blog about the crazy start to his precious life but I don't have his baby pictures on my computer so that will be another day.

Tyler was born with a Cleft Palate (which is were he has a huge hole in the roof of his mouth) so he had to have several surgeries to fix it. When he was 9 months old Ty had his first surgery. It was done at Primary Childrens in Salt Lake and he had the most amazing surgeon. Dr. Morales is a well know surgeon and has traveled around the world doing surgeries on children in countries where there are no doctors so I knew Ty would be in good hands. Still I always said I couldn't handle it if one of my kids ever had to have surgery and there I was sitting in the waiting room with butterflies in my stomach dreading the next few hours. Tyler couldn't eat or drink for midnight the night before until after the surgery, which was hard with a 9 month old baby who obviously couldn't understand why we weren't feeding him. The surgery was scheduled for 7 am so we had to be there early. By the time we took Ty back the poor little guy was hungry and cranky so when I had to hand him over to the Anesthesiologist he had the saddest look in his eyes as the big door closed and he was all alone with strangers with masks on. It broke my heart, I knew Ty would be ok but the thought of him being in there all by himself was hard for me to handle. The surgery went great and it was 45 min instead of 1 1/2 hours so that was nice although Drew and I had gone to grab some food and my mom called and said the surgeon needs to talk to you so we had to race back to the hospital. During the surgery Dr. Morales closed up the hole as much as he could then they placed a prosthesis in with nails to cover the hole the rest of the way. Ty was in recovery for about an hour and it was horrible! He was in and out of sleep and when he woke up he would just scream and I tried to comfort him but he looked at me almost like he wasn't sure who I was. We got moved up to our room and Tyler cried for about 4 hours and he would only let Drew and I hold him so it was a very long day. They had put a stitch through his tongue so he couldn't swallow it during surgery and it had to stay in for 24 hours so Ty wouldn't eat or drink anything. Since he wouldn't eat or drink he had to be in the hospital for 48 hours instead or the usual 24. Once we got released Ty had to wear arm restraints for 6 weeks so he couldn't get his fingers in his mouth. One surgery down one to go.



Tyler's second surgery was April 2008 and he was 18 months old. I was really dreading this one because Ty was older and I was 14 weeks pregnant. Two weeks before the surgery Ty had to have his prosthesis removed. It was a horrible experience for both of us. A dentist had to do it and they didn't numb him so he was screaming and bleeding and they had me holding him down and now to this day he won't let anyone close to his mouth. For this surgery I decided to get Ty's feet zoned so the drugs would wear off faster and he would bounce back faster. We had the exact same routine when we first got to the hospital, they weighed Ty, got his gown on (which was the same size he wore the year before) and got him all preped, this is also where my dad and Drew gave Tyler a blessing for the first surgery and for this one he had a blessing at the hotel the night before. This surgery got off to a very late start and Ty was getting so mad and hungry it was hard to keep him happy. They came and gave him some "happy" medicine a few minutes before taking him back and this time they took him in a cool wagon filled with pillows and warm blankets so he thought it was pretty cool. This surgery took almost 2 hours because they had to stretch the muscles and then the tissues so he had two sets of stitches from the back of his mouth to his teeth. While they were doing the surgery they decided to replace the tubes in his ears. The recovery was a little better, he didn't cry quite as long and he started eating a lot faster. He had the stitch though his tongue this time too but they took it out a lot faster so he could eat and he was able to go home the next morning. He had to wear his arm restraints for 6 weeks this time as well. Sorry for the long post but I had a lot to cover.