The hard part is over, or is it?

The surgery is over, the dreaded days at the hospital are over too. The procedure went well and as we had anticipated, Sophia has trouble with nausea for a couple of days after. Even though I know the nausea is pretty typical for her after every surgery, it never gets easier to see her struggling with it. But we are home now and that's good. It has been overwhelming and stressful, figuring it all out from cleaning and taking care of the little wound (which is not fun for Sophia and rightly so), to working our way up to the amount of fluids that the doctor gave us trying to find the best schedule, the best position, the best amount of fluid at a time, the best rate to give it to her... It's a lot! There's a moment, after the first attempt to feed Sophia at home, I was so clumsy, Sophia was crying, I didn't have the things I needed ready and i thought I was not going to be able to do it. I wanted to cry... and I did. I am so fortunate to have a man by my side like Eric, he saw me like that and took Sophia, calmed her down and told her that her mama is going to take care of her, told her that everything is going to be ok. He gave me space to cry and calm down, and then told me that it was natural to feel that way and that it was going to get better.
 It's a learning process for us and for Sophia. She is now letting me maneuver the tube better and so the feedings are not as stressful as they were. We still have a long way to go but I hope that the healing process progresses at a reasonable pace. The little opening is still fresh and needs to be kept as dry as possible. The cleaning is painful for me to do because is obviously painful for her and I can't stand seeing her so uncomfortable, but it needs to be done. We saw our pediatrician and he said it looks ok, but he wants to prevent infection so he asked me to put some antibacterial cream on it. What makes me feel better is that there's a couple of nurses in Sophia's classroom, they have lots of experience with feeding tubes and I'm sure they have ideas on how to make this more bearable for my little girl.
The first day at home I was wondering if we did the right thing,  and I have to say that despite the struggles I think in the long run it's going to be so worth it. Now we realized how little fluid Sophia was really taking! We are definitely seeing  a lot more wet diapers and that's actually a very good thing. Also having the option of giving her bolus feedings as needed, takes the pressure off of having to push every single bite to make sure she eats the calories she needs, and now we can concentrate on the fine motor skills and independence. So with that in mind, I need to take a deep breath and deal with the healing part of this process knowing that the benefits will definitely compensate the struggles we went through to get there.

What a strong girl Sophia is!