Ear Tubes!

Parker had a long 3 hour procedure yesterday, and as usual, did great!  He had a small version of ear tubes put in, his ears drained, a diagnostic hearing test, and an eye exam for contact fittings.  Luckily, most of the more painful items (like an IV) happened after P was already under.  Like every parent, there is so much anxiety that comes with your baby being under anesthesia, and the spiel of all of the risks the doctors tell you beforehand is enough for a panic attack.  I try really hard not to look over my shoulder for the "bad stuff," and have always been made to feel foolish when Parker gets through a procedure and was much braver and tougher than me!  The doctors did end up fully intubating him due to the length of the procedures, which wasn't terribly surprising to us.  

The one thing I totally understand but still hate is the process of each doctor pulling us into a small conference room after each procedure was over to let us know the outcome and expectations.  We were fortunate enough to receive good news in each one of these, but the process of being called, sitting in the office, and waiting for someone to start speaking is intimidating.  Parker's procedures were all fairly routine, but I can imagine all of the tears parents must shed in those conference rooms.

At this point, we are expected to go back to follow up with all of these docs in a few weeks to keep monitoring everything.  Parker's hearing was normal, which we are SO thankful for.  Our ophthalmologist, who we just recently were switched to by our former ophthalmologist, got very wishy-washy with her view on contacts.  I don't feel that contacts are her typical method of solving issues with glasses, so she put the onus on us to decide if we wanted to continue testing glasses or move forward with contacts.  In all honestly, as difficult as contacts will be for me, Parker hasn't been seeing properly for all of the 16.5 months of his life, which are critical months for learning and exploring your environment.  I really don't want to spend another 2-3 months paying for and testing glasses frames without him being able to see.  So, our decision has been to move forward with glasses, and hopefully test glasses as we can.

For today, we are back to playing, and all taking turns sleeping in the hopes of getting back on some sort of normal schedule!