Evening all.

DDs surgery went very well. They successfully closed her stomas and reconnected her bowel. They also fixed a couple of hernias that had developed around her abdominal wall and tidied up where some scar tissue had developed so she has a nice neat incision. She also got a bonus appendectomy at the same time! Apparently the appendix can be an issue for adhesions down the track so it made sense to take it out now.

She was taken to theatre about 145pm and was back in NICU about 345pm so reasonably quick, but it felt like the longest few hours of my life. The waiting just kills you. She was ventilated for the operation but they extubated her within half an hour of returning to the ward. Once she started to wake up she got a wee bit agitated about having the tube down her throat and it was safer to take it out. She's being doing fine all on her own respiratory wise which is great. She's bounced back very quickly.

She is a bit cranky with the universe right now but is getting more and more peaceful and having a nice big rest with her pain relief on board. Give her a day or two and she'll be back to her normal self. She is already starting to wake up and bit & look around for a while then go back to sleep.

So my darling girl has been so brave and done such an amazing job. She is sporting a very lovely hair-do now. They needed to get another central line in and tried once down the side of her head behind her left ear - shaved a big c-shape patch there - but no luck. So they had to do the same thing on the right hand side poor little chicken. I know its only hair and that it will grow back, but she had such gorgeous hair.

We are relieved and anxious all at the same time, we miss her terribly and are just beyond exhausted. DP is there with her tonight while I try and get some down time at home but I just can't sit still. I feel like a zombie but just can't bring myself to rest cos it feels like I just have to get back up again so quickly.

Hopefully in the next day or two they'll re-start feeds and we'll be back on the road to Special Care and ultimately home. If I were to guess I would say its still around 4 weeks away, but we're just going day-by-day.

Thank you all for thinking of her, it has really helped us all.

xx