Dec 27th through Jan 3rd Surgery and recovery

Surgery morning was crazy!!! When I called to make sure I stopped feeding the baby in time for surgery they said, "Um, maybe we didn't send you the change in schedule... You're supposed to be checking in right now!" They definitely didn't send me the changed schedule, so I made a quick panicked call to our babysitter who agreed to babysit at the hospital, all day!!!! Can you believe it? She is such an amazing gift to our family! I picked her up and she had wrapped gifts for each child, and a big gift to share!!!! After we valet parked the car I gave her a twenty to feed the oldest three and the littlest two and I went back to prepare for surgery. Of course I had packed fun new toys for Alex and Isaac to play with pre-surgery and they were doing so well. Then the bio family got there. They took away the new toys, put them in a pile on the floor and held both boys while I sat in a corner of the room. The only conversation in the room was not friendly, we'll leave it at that. The boys did so well! The same surgeon worked on both of them, so we did the baby first. Alex did really well coming out of surgery he was groggy but perked right up when he was offered a slushy!! ;-) His bio dad came to sit with him while I went back to recovery to hold the baby as he came out of anesthesia. He was a little harder. :-( After his second bottle he went to sleep and his bio mom came back... Now before this whole day started we had a letter from the GAL saying that they could only come back one family member at a time. BUT, I looked up and there they all were, crowding into the baby's room. He was now awake and screaming. I asked the nurse to go in and remind them it was supposed to be one at a time, and find out why he was screaming! She came back to tell me that the bio mom said he was just gassy,... Well ten minutes later he was still screaming and I just couldn't take it anymore!!! Just inside the baby's room the smell hit me! He was very very poopy, so I tried telling the bio mom, I think he's poopy. She turned her back to me and said to the baby, "You just know that your mommy is here and you want to nurse." I'm sorry, I already said that I just couldn't take it anymore... So maybe this next part won't come as a shock to you, I walked right up to the bio mom, took the baby from her arms and laid him on the bed. I will spare you the description of what I found when I stripped him. I will tell you how I responded though. I screamed for the nurse, who in turn screamed for more nurses, and hot water, and towels. It was awful!!! There was even talk of taking him back into surgery to clean and re-bandage. Heartbreaking. All this time the family was only interested in the baby, I was really glad that Alex's bio dad had come to be with him. I called for my babysitter to bring the other kids and meet us, and the nurse told me she had called for a hospital transport. She helped us all out to the van which took forever for the valet to bring... By the time it came the bio family had surrounded us again. I heard one of the valet guys ask what the grandmother was doing? Asking her if she was writing down our license plate, then my babysitter came to my side of the car, "The grandma won't let me in the car..." Ok, now I'm ticked, I let peopled walk all over me, I know...but I draw the line at intimidating my friends and family. I told her to push by her, and close the door. I got everyone in the van and that's when security came out and I heard them ask them to back away from the car. The next week was filled with lots of holding time, med logs, quiet reading, and just recovering.