Give me a sedated, hospital stay recovery any day...

Yesterday was terrible!! We were called back to the recovery area way faster than what we thought was going to happen. When they called our names in the waiting room, we thought we were going to be getting an update from the operating room - instead they said "she's finished - read to go and see her?" Of course we were ready to see her - but we didn't have time to mentally prepare ourselves for what we were about to see. We were escorted back to the recovery room and the nurse led us to Elle's bed and before we actually saw her, we heard her. We heard that all too familiar - just had the ventilator pulled, hoarse little cry. It's enough to break a momma's heart (or daddy's heart for that matter). Elle was thrashing around - kicking her arms and legs and screaming as loud as her little voice would let her. The poor nurse was trying to do so many things - calm her down, give her some pain medicine, say hi to us and get us taken care of. He asked if I wanted to hold her and I immediately sat down and waited for him to pick Elle up and get all her tubes situated. Our poor little Elle Belle was covered in blood on her face and wouldn't let anyone touch her from her neck up to wipe it off. She had blood coming out of her nose and her mouth - it was just terrible! The pain meds finally kicked in and she calmed down. We saw Dr. E and he said surgery went well. He widened both her nostrils, cut her frenulum and put some stitches in her tongue that will eventually dissolve, he looked in her ears and didn't see any fluid so he didn't have to put tubes in and he scoped her throat. During the throat scope he did notice that Elle's trachea is narrow. I'm not sure what this means but he wasn't concerned about it at all. One of the things with CHARGE babies is esophageal atresia (where the esophagus is completely closed and blocked). Elle isn't anywhere near this point but that was the first thing I thought about when I heard him say that. The anesthesiologist stopped by and said she did great. I was holding Elle and every few minutes she would wake up and scream and kick and then fall back into a drug induced sleep. After about an hour, we were moved into the secondary recovery room which was one step closer to going home. Elle wouldn't let me put her down. I tried to put her down to charge her diaper and she started screaming so bad her nose started to bleed. I had to pass her off to Lee to go to the bathroom and the same thing happened. She's never been a momma's girl - but yesterday she definitely was. A few hours later, Dr. E came by and told us we could go home and then a while later, the anesthesiologist came by and released us. They had been watching Elle's oxygen saturation level - it had been pretty low after surgery and they were waiting until it rose to a higher level before the anesthesiologist was comfortable with us going home. I can honestly say that yesterday in the recovery room was the worst recovery in all of her 5 surgeries. Give me a sedated, ventilated recovery any day. I told Lee that and he asked why. With all the other surgeries, she came out of the operating room sedated and on the ventilator. Yesterday was a completely different experience. She was in pain and vocalizing it - letting all of us know how badly she was hurting. She was covered in blood which was just terrible to see. We couldn't do anything for her except hold her and rock her and even that was horrible because I kept thinking that if I rocked too hard in the rocking chair - I would make the bleeding start again. It's a good thing I was wearing a black sweater yesterday because I was covered in Elle's blood. Walking out of the hospital was another terrible experience. I had her covered with a blanket while I was holding her - but she kept lifting her head up to see what was going on and when she would lift up - she would show everyone her bloody little face..ugh. The car ride home was terrible - it was raining and gross outside and of course, the minute I put Elle into her carrier she started crying so bad her nose started bleeding - so I held her in the back seat - with the seat belt going over both of us - for the entire ride home. We picked up her meds on the way home and then put her right into our bed as soon as we walked in the door. She was in a medicine induced sleep for a good part of the afternoon. Around 7pm, all hell broke loose - she woke up and her face and clothes were covered in blood. We figured it out later that the stitch that was on the tip of her tongue had been ripped out - either by Elle's teeth or by her pacifier that she was able to suck on. Again, she wouldn't let us touch her face - she looked like a crime scene victim. We took pictures but I wouldn't dare post them - they are too graphic and make me cringe just thinking about them. She fell into another medicine induced sleep and woke back up around 10pm. Lee and I had already talked about it that when she woke up again we would give her a bath and see if we could at least get some of the blood off of her. Sure enough, we filled the sink with warm water and put her in it and she instantly relaxed. I was worried she would scream the whole time like she had if I had put her down at any other time during the day. I couldn't even put her down to change her diaper without screams and tears coming out. Luckily, the warm water helped and she sat there and stared at her toys while Lee and I were able to get a majority of the dried blood off of her. Towards the end of her bath, the old Elle started to come through - she smiled at one of her toys and then picked it up and put it in her mouth. Lee and I breathed a huge sigh of relief when she started to act more and more like herself. Lee got her dressed in clean pjs and brought her back into the kitchen. She was all smiles and dancing for the rest of the evening until she fell back asleep. I woke up at 3 to give her some more pain medicine but other than that - we had a drama free night. While it was nice to be home last night, I think I still would have preferred a hospital stay - at least just overnight. I was so nervous all afternoon and evening - especially with all the blood. ugh! The good news in all of this and everything that happened yesterday is that Elle should be surgery free for years to decades. She had been completely fixed - from head to toe - all before her first birthday! Our next goal is to get that new tongue working on eating so we can get rid of the feeding tube!! Our prayers are with Witt today as his heart surgery was postponed until today.