Baby needs surgery

How to stress out new parents:

1. Tell them their 7-week-old baby needs surgery. (What? Yikes!)

2. Let them sweat it out for a week trying to schedule a consultation visit with an unresponsive surgeon's office.

3. Get their appointment scheduled for the soonest possible time (with a big push from the pediatrician), and tell them it will be in THREE WEEKS.

4. Give them a list of things to watch for in the meantime that would necessitate an immediate trip to the Emergency Room.

Trust me, this works.

I had noticed some strange swelling just below Rosemary's abdomen a few weeks ago, and was not sure what to think about it, but kept an eye on it at each diaper change. Sometimes it was there, sometimes not...and sometimes it was two swollen lumps, sometimes just one. Last Sunday, she had two very swollen lumps, and I asked Todd and mom to look and see what they thought. The three of us agreed that it would be best to take her to the pediatrician ASAP. We took her in on Monday and found out that Rosemary has a hernia, probably a double hernia, and the solution for that is surgery. (Surgery?? This is not something I had expected to hear!! Yikes!)

I called the surgeon's office on Tuesday morning to schedule a consult (per the pediatrician's instructions), and was told they were working on the schedules and would have to call me back. I hadn't heard anything by Wednesday, so called back and asked when I should expect to hear from them. Their response? "By the end of the week." (umm... Ok... What? Are you kidding me?) So Friday rolled around, and Todd had taken the day off work and we were heading out to run errands, so I called the surgeon's office to give them my cell number... At which time they told me they'd probably call me by the middle of the next week. What?? By this time I am quietly freaking out. Our girl needs surgery, and I can't even get them to call me back to schedule an appointment for the consultation!!! Aaaaaaargh.

On Monday, the bulge looked and felt esprcially bad, so I called the pediatrician's office and they asked me to bring her on in. By the time we got there, Rosemary looked normal as can be... So no real cause for alarm, but the doctor was surprised to hear of our scheduling difficulties and asked her assistant to make some phone calls. Apparently, we were on page four of a list of people to schedule. Thanks to the pediatrician's intervention, we were moved to page one and are scheduled for a consult on June 14. This still seems like a long time to wait - I hate to think how long we would have had to wait if we'd stayed on page four!

So for now we wait. And keep an eye out for the indications that she needs to go to the Emergency Room (if the bulge looks red or purple, or feels hot to the touch, or if Rosemary has a fever). We don't think it's causing her pain right now, but it's kind of hard to tell since she can't really tell us what hurts or why she's crying. The good news is that she doesn't cry ALL the time, so even if it is painful once in a while, it is not a constant pain.