Farewell Memorial Day Weekend

I always look forward to Memorial Day weekend. As a kid, it meant that school was almost over and summer was about to begin. Camp, swimming, staying up late...all the good stuff. As I became an adult, I looked forward to it because it meant a 3 day weekend -- and when you're working an office job -- that's awesome!!!! Then, when Nestor and I got married, we decided on Memorial Day weekend, so we could throw a huge, boogie down wedding for all our friends and family -- many of whom were out of towners.

But today, well...as Mom of Amelia, I'm sad it's over, because it means that her surgery is the day after tomorrow. I know she'll be fine. I know the procedures she's having done are "routine". I know she's a trooper and that she'll be so much better off in the long run to have all this done at one time -- and just to get it all taken care of so she can progress. But tonight, as I put my sweet little girl to bed, she looked up at me with those big, brown, trusting eyes and gave me the look. The look that only a little trusting child can give a parent. The look that says "I know you'll never let anything bad happen to me."

I lost it.

I'm going to walk into NYU on Wednesday morning at 6:15am and hand over my baby girl to 3 different surgeons so they can perform strabismus eye surgery (working on 3 muscles), replace her ear tubes (3rd set), remove her adnoise (her nasal passage is 90% blocked) and completely redo her g-tube site (sew up the existing site and punch another hole in her stomach). Yes, these are top surgeons. Yes, this is all routine stuff. Yes, children have amazing resilience.

But I feel awful ....and angry -- so f#@^&*g angry that she has to go through this. Amelia's come such a long way. I know her site can't stay the way it is -- the track (think of the shaft of an earring hole) has stretched and all this raw gooey skin is sitting just under her Mic-key button. It won't allow the button to sit flat and we have to put cut pads around the site to keep the milk and stomach acids from pouring out of it.

On top of all the obvious pain and recovery, the other big thing is that we have worked so hard to build up Amelia's stomach muscles to help her core to strengthen and now, they're going to cut through a whole new set of stomach muscles. She's been sitting up so well -- finally. Yesterday I was playing with her and she sat up for a solid 45 minutes -- completely unassisted and effortless.

I know it will all be fine. I'll vent to you guys and get over my anger (for the moment)...I'm having a "why her" kind of night. The important thing is to keep my eye on the "big picture" and jet through this so we can see our beautiful girl with straight eyes (hopefully), ear infection free who no longer snores so loud and can breathe better, dare I say -- through her nose and gets her g-tube feeds hassle free -- with the incredible added bonus for Mommy of NO MORE CAUTERIZING!!!! Too good to be true.

Keep us in your thoughts and dreams. I'll keep you posted.