Katie gets her ear tubes

On Saturday Katie had surgery to insert tubes into both of her ears. She is pretty young to have the surgery. Her doctor said he has done children as young as 2 months but it isn't often a 4-month-old needs tubes. She had her 3rd ear infection on our Texas trip so we all felt it was time to have tubes. It really helped Sophie with her ear infections when she got them a couple of years ago.

Katie wasn't allowed to eat for 8 hours prior to the surgery. John and I were a little nervous about that since she is still solely breastfed and still eats once in the middle of the night. She did great. Surgery was scheduled for 7am so I fed her at 10:30pm Friday night. She woke up a little fussy shortly before we were ready to leave the surgery center about 5:30am. She did amazing not being able to eat and being awake. She actually fell back asleep in my arms while the doctor was briefing us on what was going to happen.

From the time they took her back for surgery to the time Dr. McKenna came out was only 10 minutes. He had mentioned he would work as quickly as he could because he wanted her out as briefly as possible. She had general anesthesia and he said children her age go to sleep very quickly but can also decline really quickly if they don't handle it well so he wanted it as brief as possible. By the time we were done talking with the doctor she was in recovery waking up and crying. It isn't fun when a child comes out of anesthesia because they are really disoriented. Dr. McKenna said he removed a lot of thick mucus from her ear so she will be able to hear better. They let us leave within 15 minutes in recovery and she finally calmed down once we were in the car. She slept a lot the rest of the day. What a trooper!