Night Shift Dad

Daniel is certainly redefining what it means to work the night shift. Not only has he been working from home during his usual shift from 8pm to 6am, but he's also been in charge of Katie for most of that time. People ask me how she's doing at sleeping through the night and I have to reply that I honestly don't know. Daniel brings her to me when it's time to feed her. I have a light snack while she eats, and then he takes her into the living room and lays her down in her car seat to sleep while I go back to sleep in our room. Typically she sleeps quietly while he works on his laptop. I don't know what we'd do if Daniel's boss hadn't been so amazingly understanding through all this.

Daniel's "dad shift" has gotten a little tougher just these past couple of days. I had my ankle surgery on Thursday afternoon. What they didn't mention ahead of time is that the pain medication would make me so drowsy and spaced out that it isn't safe for me to hold Katie without supervision. I could nod off or zone out and accidentally drop her. So, Daniel has to fill in and pull double parent duty even more than before.

Nothing went quite the way we'd originally planned for the day of the actual surgery. Our friend, Debbie, wasn't able to come until almost 3pm, so Daniel and I brought Danya, Gloria, Kevin, and Katie with us to get me checked into the surgery center. Then they left to pick up Snow White and Thumbelina from school and took them all to Westminster for Snow White's speech therapy appointment. Meanwhile, Debbie was at our house to meet the bus when Miss Lady and Brother got home. Daniel swung by and picked them up from the house and then came and got me with all eight kids in tow. The nurses, of course, spoiled the kids by giving them snacks and such while I was recovering a bit.

Everything went well overall in my surgery. The only problem was a miscommunication regarding the proper pain med dosing, so when I woke up apparently I was screaming. The doctor had said he was giving me a local shot in my leg to help numb it, so the anethesiologist gave me less pain medication, and it ended up not being nearly enough. They fixed that quickly with a dose of morphine. I remember waking up in agony at 3:40pm, blinking, and then suddenly it was about 4:15pm. The nice thing was that the anesthesiologist said that since she wasn't giving me any more anesthesia than what they'd give a woman having a c-section, it wouldn't hurt Katie any for me to immediately nurse her. No pumping and dumping required.

Since then, I've been hurting and feeling dopey, but otherwise not too bad. The one thing that concerns me is that my foot seems to be curving in towards my body, making me wonder if my tendons aren't all out of whack or something. I'm going to ask about it on Monday when I go back to see the doctor. I've added a picture to this post of me and my family in post-op. The nurse was nice enough to take it for us.