Like his father and his father's father

On Monday, Jellybean had *the procedure* done. This was The Boy's decision, as we had agreed. (If you're curious, ear piercing is my domain. Yep, I think I got the better end of the deal.) Because a few friends have expressed interest in how we went about the whole business, this will be a long post which covers: the decision, the process, the disclosure, the procedure, and the aftermath. Skip to the bits that interest you most (the disclosure is particularly fun).

The Decision
There were several decisions we made regarding the surgery:

1. We would not do it until he was at least 2 years old. I wanted him to be able to tell me if he was in pain.
2. We would not follow the Filipino tradition of having it done to mark puberty. We felt it would be too late and traumatic. Plus, I'm pretty sure it would be harder to convince a doctor to do it. They don't generally encourage it.
3. We would not go to the local Filipino tuli doctor. We wanted to have it done in a hospital.

The process
The actual process of organising the surgery was slightly tricky. If you ask for it for anything but cultural or religious reasons, you'll have a very difficult time finding a doctor who'll agree to do it. Our GP questioned The Boy about his reasons. So did our paediatrician. And both tried to put a discouraging word. But The Boy was adamant, and when we called the paediatric surgeon's office, we had to make sure we cited "for cultural reasons".

We had one consultation with the surgeon who talked us through the procedure and did a quick examination.

Jellybean's reaction to the examination was to glare at the surgeon and say, "I didn't like that!"

Then total cost was $1100 for the surgeon and the anaesthetist. Our health insurance covered the hospital fees for day surgery in a private hospital. I'm not sure if any of the doctor's fees are rebatable.

The disclosure
The day before the surgery, I told Jellybean that he'd be going to hospital the next day so the doctor could "do a procedure" on his doodle. He was a bit concerned, and The Boy berated me for mentioning it.

"How would you like it if you woke up and suddenly your penis was painful and looked different?" I asked him. Yep, I thought so.

We told Jellybean that the girls would be going to daycare, but he'd have the day off because we were going to hospital. At hospital, he would go to sleep and then the doctor would do something that will make his doodle tingle, and when he woke up, it might be uncomfortable and a tiny bit ouchie, but that it wouldn't really hurt because the meds would make it feel better.

Me: "Jellybean, the doctor's going to make it so that your doodle looks like Daddy's."

Jellybean: "The doctor will make my doodle look like Daddy's?"

Me: "Yep! How exciting!"

The Boy: "Yeah, it'll make your doodle massive!" (I rolled my eyes.)

Me: "Don't give him unrealistic expectations!"

Jellybean: "Daddy's doodle is hairy."

A few more years for you, mate.

Jellybean, of course, was mostly excited about not having to go to daycare. Oh, and we bribed him with DVDs.

The procedure
We arrived at the hospital at 11.30am, and thank god for internet kiosks and YouTube and Thomas the Tank Engine because we didn't go into surgery until after 3pm. Jellybean had had nothing to eat since 6.30am, although he never really asked for food. (But we also didn't get to eat until 3pm, which made me rather grumpy.)

In general, the hospital was accommodating. Except for the long wait, we couldn't complain about the standard of care.

When Jellybean was asked to lie down on the bed, he was a bit concerned, but had fun being wheeled to the operating theatre. They staff were very good with kids and very reassuring. But when he had to lie down on the operating table, he started to cry because, well, it did look a bit scary. He had to have a canula inserted, which I think hurt, so he was very teary. But once the anaesthetic was administered, it probably took less than a minute for him to go under.

Then, The Boy and I went off to eat.

When the surgery was finished, our buzzer went off, and I went into the recovery room to comfort Jellybean. He was very teary and kept telling me, "I wanna get outta here!" When he was settled, they wheeled us (with me on the bed!) back to the ward and we had to wait at least 2 hours so they could observe him. The nurse came in to ask Jellybean if he wanted jelly, ice block or juice.

"I just want jelly, please."

And then, once he'd had a couple of spooonfuls: "Mm, good jelly!"

What a sweetheart.

At this point, The Boy had to leave to pick the girls up from daycare. Luckily, he worked out how to get the Thomas the Tank Engine DVD playing on my laptop, the Jellybean was quite content to veg out and eat jelly and, later, an ice block.

Jellybean was given a cortal block that was supposed to block most of the pain for 24 hours. However, as soon as he saw the blood he got a bit hysterical. I had to give him breathing exercises by channeling all the Lamaze breathing I've seen on medical shows. (Generally, Aussies don't use it for labour.) And we told him that we couldn't tell if it was ouchie if he was crying for no reason. Finally, when he settled down, we told him to tell us if he's "worried, or uncomfortable, or ouchie" which seemed to work. The nurse was lovely. Firm but kind.

Well, talk about trauma--what about mine? I noticed that The Boy was absent while all this was going on. Yes, he was picking up the girls, but that's not the point.

The nurse told Jellybean that when he got home, he was to lie down on the couch, eat nice things and watch DVDs all day. I told you she was a good nurse. Even so, when she left, Jellybean turned to me and whispered in a very urgent voice, "I need to get out of here now."

The aftermath
We naively thought that Jellybean could go back to daycare the next day. Yeah, right. Basically, when we got home, there was much trauma over changing his undies because the gauze was stuck from the bleeding. Finally, we just had to soothe him while I slowly peeled it off. I think he was crying more out of fear than anything else, and because he could feel some tugging. Fortunately, he managed to pee, which was surprising. He also slept through the night, which means the pain relief worked pretty well.

The first day home was the worst. When he woke up, the gauze was stuck because he'd bled overnight. He said he was in pain, but he wet his pants (in the bathroom, luckily) and I eventually realised that the "ouchie" wasn't really pain from the surgery but pain from trying to hold in his pee. (This happened a few times before I caught on.)

He mostly spent the day lying on the couch and watching DVDs as instructed. I mostly spent the day trying to work while dutifully pampering him. I didn't mind, actually, except it was difficult juggling work because I couldn't properly concentrate for more than about half an hour at a time. Also, I had to sit next to him on the couch because one of the Thomas DVDs had a ghost and it was scaaaaaary. By the evening, he was a lot more comfy about having the gauze and getting in and out of undies. He was also on painkillers every 4 hours. Pain Stop apparently doesn't taste very good, so it was a trial getting it down the first couple of times. After that, I used a syringe. Later, I thought to bribe him with a treat after the meds. That worked really well.

This morning started out fine, but when he did his mid-morning pee, there was a lot of blood on his undies, and I made the mistake of saying, "Oh, there's blood!" At which point the hysterics began and it took aaaaaages to calm him down, get the undies off, have him pee and then get new undies on again. I had to yell at the top of my voice to get through his panic. I hope none of my neighbours were home. In truth, I doubt it hurt that much since he was loaded up on painkillers. It was mostly the idea of bleeding that scared him. Well, hell, it scared me, too. I rang the hospital to see if this was a problem, but apparently it's quite common, usually because a scab has fallen away. Yech!

It was at this point where I questioned why I was at home dealing with this mess when it was supposedly The Boy's decision. Maybe I'll leave the girls with him right after they get their ears pierced.

This evening, Jellybean had his first bath. It was fine until it was time to dry. Hysterics again. What's worse, we were out of gauze and the nurse told me that once they were used up, we could just apply Vaseline straight onto his undies. But of course, Jellybean was now used to the gauze and couldn't imagine life without it, so he was petrified of having just undies on. We must've been screaming for about 10 minutes--him because he was scared of the thought of putting his undies on, and me because I needed to scream just so he could hear me on top of his voice--and I don't even want to imagine what my neighbours thought was going on. The Boy came home while this was happening, and finally, we just held on to Jellybean's hands and popped the undies on. Two seconds later, the screaming stopped.

"There. Was that ouchie?"

"No."

I rolled my eyes.

At bedtime, he had another bought of hysteria, but not as bad. The Boy tried to do the peeing routine and Jellybean was having none of it. The Boy wanted to help, but frankly, he had no clue, didn't know our routine, and Jellybean just didn't trust him, so Jellybean started yelling that he only wanted me. Good cop, bad cop--why didn't I think of it before?

And now Jellybean's tucked in bed, humming himself to sleep. And I'm trying to relax. I haven't read a book since Monday, and that's just not right.

But first, I have to finish my work. *sigh*