Hernia Surgery Recap

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It's been a month and a day since Max had his hernia repair surgery, so I figured it's time to post the recap, now that he's all healed and back to normal!( (Or as normal as he can be, considering his genetic! LOL)
Max had two inguinal (groin) hernias and an umbilical one… both are pretty common in baby boys, especially preemies. The inguinal need to be surgically repaired, the umbilical usually don't, but Max's was exceptionally big, and since they were going to be operating anyway, they decied to repair his belly button as well.
We reported to the hospital at 6:15 Friday morning… we waited about 20 minutes in one waiting room, and then they sent us to a private waiting room.


They gave Max a dose of Versed (a sedative) and we waited for it to kick in… watching a stoned Max is pretty funny; he was sitting on Jamie's lap, swaying his whole body to some song we couldn't hear, laughing his rear off…
Once he was nice and mellow, we handed him off to a nurse and were sent to the waiting room to, well, wait. I had been unable to get someone to give me a timeframe; the only guess I'd heard was “Well, one hernia takes about an hour, so three hours?” so I was astonished when my cell rang after only about 45 minutes to tell me that his inguinal hernias were repaired and that the doctor wanted to confirm that we wanted his umbilical fixed too.


We headed up to the recovery room, where we had to wait another 10 or so minutes for rounds to be finished, and then they let us in… ranking up there with watching a newborn Max in his isolette was seeing our 17 month old Max, still unconscious from the anesthesia, unable to touch him (You need to let someone wake naturally from anesthesia or it can be very stressful)
He came out of the anesthesia like a champ, and we were on our way home 30 minutes later, only about four hours from start to finish!
The three surgery sites had clear bandages on them, which we were instructed to leave on for 2 days. Under the clear bandages were SteriStrips, which they said would fall off on their own after a week to ten days… in true Max fashion, he pulled off his umbilical SteriStrip about 2 hours after we removed the clear bandage. So much for a week! LOL

Here's the progression in photos, since I'm always curious to *see* what I'm in for, when planning for surgery…
The umbilical hernia in July of last year, this is about as bad as it ever was… keep in mind, Max was only 7 lbs at this point!

A week or so before the surgery, MAx is about 21 lbs here. You can see it's just an empty sac of skin; once he started sitting/standing up, the abdominal muscles strengthen and pull the intestines back in, leaving just the stretched belly button.

All three surgery sites with the clear bandages intact; these are the ones we left on for two days.

When we removed the clear bandages, there was one SteriStrip on his belly button, and five or six on each inguinal site. This picture is of the one he ripped off as soon as he could! LOL

Three days post-op; you can see the tiny scab in the middle that used to be an opening… they basically cut off the excess skin and drawstring-ed it shut!

One month post-op, a gorgeous new belly button!

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4 Comments

  1. When my son was waiting for surgery, under the effects of the pre-anesthesia, he has us all laughing too. At one point he sat up and said "I tawt I taw a puddy tat!" We still laugh about that. So glad the surgery went well, always better to have it shorter than expected rather than longer.

    Great set of tactfully taken photos

  2. God news that the surgery went on well and the situation is back to normal.There is a lot of advancement in medical surgery treatments these days and therefore not much to worry if you are with a team of experts.

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