tonsils out for DS who's 4

[Hannahbanana]

My DD had her tonsils and adnoids out last year. She was almost 3 1/2 and I was 10 days off being due with baby #3 and had an almost 2 y/o to look after as well. So yes it was stressful .
The hardest thing was watching her go under the anasthesia as they had me go into the theater with her while they put the bung in her arm and knocked her out. I held it together long enough for her not to see me crying and it took me a good 10 or so minutes to pull myself together in the waiting room.
After she came out of theater I could hear her screaming and crying and it took the nurses 10 minutes to come and get me so I could calm her down....I should have been in there when she woke up but anyway.....
The day of the op she was good and eating a bit. My DH stayed overnight with her in hospital and she had a rough night and the next week was a battle to get her to eat although she did drink a fair bit cos we told her that it would make her throat feel better. She spent two days on the couch doing not much but after that she was doing her normal thing. After the first week she started eating without being 'forced' to.
It was definatley stressful and I felt so sorry for her but I am glad we got them taken out when we did. She sleeps so much better and doesn't snore anymore, she doesn't get sick as often, and doesn't cough during the night as much as before which was the reason we had them out in the first place.
Hope you all get through it ok. Good luck!!

[Mother Goose]

After she came out of theater I could hear her screaming and crying and it took the nurses 10 minutes to come and get me so I could calm her down....I should have been in there when she woke up but anyway.....

I'm sorry to hear your DD was so distressed . Unfortunatley it is a common side effect of anesthetic - especially on little people. Often children also wake distressed because they have woken in a strange place with strange people and they usually have equipment attached to them which can be scary for adults, let alone children.

Unfortunatley, you can't always go into recovery as a parent - it's not about the parent calming a child down; it's about the nursing staff making sure the child is safe and stable first and the first 15-20 minutes after waking are our most critical. Hearing your child in distress is very unnerving, especially when your gut reaction is to be a Mummy and comfort them. But it can be as equally distressing to see them unconscious, or hooked up to wires, or to see another very ill patient in the recovery area who might have a lot going on. So, from a nursing point of view, we have to think about the safety of all our patients before bringing family into a recovery area. Peadeatrics is the only area (with very few exceptions) a family member will ever be allowed into a recovery area and even then it is at the discretion of the nursing staff, if we don't think a patient is stable enough for family to be present or that we have a critical situation or a situation that we consider too risky to have non-staff present, we won't send for you.