Side Effects

Trystan is continuing to do well from his surgery last week. On Friday,
he stayed home while my sister watched him, and was, by all accounts, a
really good baby. He's been a bit gassier than normal all weekend, and
a bit more attached to me. His stool was also a bit runnier (with the
colostomy its always runny anyway, but it was much more watery than
normal). They sent him home with oral antibiotics twice a day until
Saturday night, which I think were bugging his stomach--those things
wipe out all bacteria, not just the bad ones. With a couple of days of
mommy milk, things should right themselves. His bottom actually looks
remarkably good--the incisions are essentially healed (there's a
definite red mark, but not any sort of open wound). It looks like he
has a hemorrhoid where his colon is sort of bulging out, but the surgeon
said that would right itself over time--his body and muscles will need
time to sort themselves out. He still has a catheter until tomorrow,
which doesn't bother him any, though it has forced us to pull out and
wash 9-month sized clothes for him--he was on the verge of growing out
of the 6-month ones anyway, but the padding from the second diaper is
making the old ones impossible to button. I think he's been growing
anyway, and we'd already started weeding out the smaller clothes from
his closet before the surgery. Heck, he ate nearly 20 ounces in 8 hours
from my sister on Friday--we normaly send 12-15 to daycare, so I may
have to reevaluate that.

Charlotte is still recovering as well. I think having me stay at the
hospital was pretty hard on her. I got to see her once, for about an
hour, between Sunday bedtime and Thursday after school. My husband had
a harder time getting her dropped off at daycare all last week, and she
is normally somewhat clingy in the mornings. She refused to leave his
side for her Wednesday dance class, so got to sort of play in the hall
out side class--she loved the class the previous 2 weeks when I took her
and joined the group without a backward glance at me. This morning, she
threw a fit when we tried to explain that Trystan wasn't going to
school, but she was, and that I was doing the dropoff (normally her
daddy drops off and I pick up). When we walked into the building, she
got visibly scared at the door to her classroom, and hid her face on my
neck, until one of the workers retrieved her from my arms, and gave her
another neck to hide in.

I hope after tomorrow, that things will get back to almost normal again
for a couple of weeks. Both kids will be able to go to daycare and stay
home on the same schedule, and I won't be disappearing for a several day
stretch again. I guess for the next surgery we'll have to reevaluate
(again) our approach to spending time with both kids. With the last
one, I left Trystan overnights to come home, but that left him a lot
clingier for a couple of weeks afterwards. This time I stayed with him
and my husband only brought Charlotte to see us once, which traumatized
her. If only there were two of me and two of my husband (or at least
1.5 of each), we could cover both kids at once!