My poor baby boy :(

Just a quick update - I don't seem to have much time these days for anything that doesn't revolve around babies and feeding!

Well we have just spent the last two days up at PMH again. I had noticed last Sunday that Blake had a really swollen groin area. I rang Murdoch hospital and spoke to a midwife there who said that some swelling was not abnormal but that if we were concerned to call Dr Crompton (our Paed.) and make an appointment. We already had an appointment booked with Dr Crompton for Wednesday anyhow so we decided to leave it till then and mention it at the appointment.

So Wednesday rolled around and Dr Crompton took a look at it. As soon as he saw it he diagnosed an ingual hernia (the intestines are pushed down through the canals where the testes descend and bulge into the groin where they don't belong.) This is caused by weak muscles and happens in about 3% of baby boys. He told us we would need to go up to PMH and see a surgeon to have it fixed. We left the appointment at Murdoch and went straight to the emergency room at PMH. After being assessed the Drs there told us that because they were able to manually reduce it (push it back in) it was not an emergency, but that he would need to be operated on within 24-48 hours or else there was a risk of damage to the intestines.

We got a phone call the next day to say that the op would be done on Friday morning. We had to be up at the hospital at 7.00am and Blake was first on the list at 8.15am. The operation went well but the poor little man was so unhappy when he came out :( every time he moved he screamed in pain - very uncharacteristic of him! By the afternoon he had settled a lot more though and we were happy with him by the time we left him there in the evening. It was so weird to walk away from that hospital on Friday night with only Max in the pram. It was a sad feeling and I think it felt even more wrong to me than all those other times we walked away without babies. Perhaps it was because we were leaving only one baby behind on his own and I was worried he would be lonely and sad :(

After a strange night at home we woke up today and went to PMH to bring Blake home again. It took a little longer than expected to get the doctors to let us go home because they were concerned about the monitors picking up more desats but they were only happening when he was feeding and we were convinced that they were nothing more than what was happening weeks ago when we were discharged from ward 6b. After calling the neonates ward and asking about the history and calling Dr Crompton the Doctors on 5d were happy enough to let us go home but have told us that Dr Crompton wants to see us on Monday.

So - that has been the last few days for us. Hopefully that will be the last time we need to stay in hospital too!