Hello! We're home from hospital, my daughter is snoozing on my chest after a feed and I feel relaxed enough that she's recovering to write a post about it. It might be fairly detailed, partly in case it helps any other frantic mother googling in the early hours!
Part of my despair at the start of this post was that we'd been in hospital for a few days and there'd been lots of delays in getting her diagnosed with anything other than reflux and having a neurotic first time mum 
(this was just one doctor. The others were incredible).
Although P.S had been mooted, one doctor wanted to discount it because it was rare in girls and also she wasn't presenting as very dehydrated or underweight. I argued that was because we were in hospital early in the process (due to me contacting OOH on a Friday night)...a different timing would probably have meant I spent a week back and forth to the GP before we got to the hospital admittance stage. This went down pretty badly with that particular doctor as although she then agreed I was correct, I think she was annoyed I had disagreed with her. So, OH and I (and one rather exceptional nurse) lobbied for an ultrasound, which was eventually agreed.
The ultrasound showed a thickened pyloris and a distended fluid-filled tummy. Both radiographer staid they believed this was a stenosis.
I was upset at this point at the thought of an operation and potential complications of anaesthesia (I know nothing about anaesthesia so the concept scared me)
However, partly because it was a Sunday afternoon and partly because that bloody doctor seemed determined to prove herself right, there was then some inter-doctor discussions about whether my daughter really did have pyloric stenosis.
At this point, she was already on an IV drip and had an NH tube to empty her tummy. The process of insertion of both was pretty harrowing and we were both finding the "nil by mouth" thing tortuous. She screamed for food for hours, and I couldn't bear being unable to comfort her.
So being told that it would have to continue indefinitely whilst they decided whether she'd need an operation or not (I was told we may wait a week!) was just awful. I was a wreck and on the edge of completely losing my shit (I was very sleep deprived too). OH had been present in hospital for most of the day times but wasn't allowed there later on. Due to bad coincidences, all of the conversations with the doctors took place when he wasn't there so I'd been battling that on my own. In hindsight, I think that took a toll, too.
However, the head surgeon came round in the morning, reviewed her notes, took a history from me, and said it was pretty unequivocal that she would need the op and he would schedule it for that day, once the drip had corrected her blood chemistry.
By that point, the operation seemed less scary than a week of not knowing. The paediatric anaesthecian (spelling??!) came to talk to us to explain the process which helped so much. We were both reassured by that point.
The team of surgeons were amazing- they communicated so well before the operation that we (OH and I) felt really confident about the procedure. We went down to the Prep room with her and kisses and stroked her while they attached all the wires, put the surgical robe on her etc. It was pretty wrenching to leave her there lying on the table surrounded by people on scrubs, but all of the medics had been so kind and so brilliant that we knew she was in good hands.
We were allowed to go and get her about two hours later (we'd been told the op went well about an hour before that). All the recovery team were making a big fuss of her, saying how cute she was and so on. It made me feel like she'd been really genuinely cared for, which felt good.
She slowly came round and started to respond to cuddles from me and her dad, which was a relief.
I was allowed to give her a small amount of expressed milk after 6 hours, and the some more a few hours after that. She was delighted!
We were back to breastfeeding the following afternoon. She was sick once which I am told is normal, but so far (touch wood) no more vomiting and one happy baby.
Thank you so much for the kind messages and the advice about self-care and expressing. I read all the messages at the time and they really really helped.
Also, the self-care ones were good to read as the nurses and my OH had been saying the same thing but it just felt so selfish when my tiny baby was in such distress. So, it was good to have a chorus of people on here telling me it was important, too.
Thank you 