Back under the knife

Though he's sixty times younger than his old man, Bryce will have been on the operating table just as many times in a few short weeks. That's hardly the kind of precociousness I'd hoped for in my children, but I do find some solace in the fact that he's had fewer, and less dangerous, surgeries than your average micro-preemie.

Unlike his previous laser surgery, this time he really will be under the knife. We visited the pediatric urologist at Children's Hospital today, and he recommended that Bryce's inguinal hernia be fixed before the end of the year. It's not an immediate danger, but they almost never close on their own, and it could abruptly become an emergency situation if his bowel gets incarcerated (trapped outside the abdominal wall). As predicted, the surgeon is also going to fix his umbilical hernia as long as he's poking around in there.

The good news is that this surgery is not terribly dangerous. The doctor told us that inguinal hernia repair is an outpatient procedure for most people, but with preemies everything is more complicated. For Bryce, the biggest concerns are anesthesia-induced apnea and infection. At Children's, they mitigate the risk of the former by "employing the best pediatric anesthesiologists in town" and mandating a hospital stay of at least one night following surgery. As far as infection is concerned, they generally don't use surgical knives that have fallen on the floor (unless it has been less than five seconds, of course). ;-P


Someone must've tipped Bryce off about Santa's naughty and nice lists, because he's still doing everything he can to work his way on to the latter. His growth has been incredible (8 lb, 10 oz today), and he's even started smiling at Mommy, Daddy and big brother Logan. His typical night time routine is to eat at 10pm, sleep quietly until 2:30am, eat again, then sleep until 7:30am; what more could a parent of a six-week-old ask for? He really seems to have turned the corner, and you'll hear no complaints from us about that. I still have to be pretty quick with the camera to catch those smiles, but I've included a few of his goofy grins with this post, along with a movie that shows how great his eyes are doing. Enjoy!

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