How on earth do you cope with your toddler needing a general anesthetic?

[IlanaK]

My 2 year old needs to have surgery to remove a hydrocele. It is routine surgery (so I am told) and he will most likely just be a day patient. However, he will of course need a general.

I am not worried about the surgery or the recovery time following. But I am terrified about him needed the anesthetic. How do you cope with watching him go under, waiting to hear he is ok, and then seeing him come out of it??

I had a bad experience with anesthetic as a teenager which may be clouding my view, but I don't think that is it. It is just terrifying me!

thanks SMBK. I must admit to feeling like a total wuss over this and haven't even mentioned it to DH. I think you are all very brave to have been through this (sometimes more than once). Good luck IlanaK, hope it all goes well for you and your little one.

My dd (2 last weekend) is going to have to have a GA next week to remove a bead from her ear. Good idea about the role playing - I wouldn't have thought of doing that.

Thanks again everyone.

Hi Bloss - nice to see you.

I will make sure to take his favourite snacks. I will have to thinnk of somewhere to go that morning to keep him distracted. He has an older brother so getting him to not eat around my youngerone will also be hard.

I had to laugh about the bf thing. I too would not eat NHS hospital food (have no idea if the private ones are any better). When I had my first ds, I send my husband out for takeaway as the food was so disgusting.

Meant to say: Ernest - sorry you had a horrible time - but pleased that your ds sailed through. Are you ok?

Ilana - the other thing to think about is contacting other members of the family. If you will have 13 grandparents. ILs, friends and relations all waiting anxiously in the wings, it might be a good idea to agree to call ONE person when your ds is out of theatre, and for them to be the contact for everyone else. the last thing you wnat it loads of people trying to call you on your mobile. You aren't suposed to use them in hospitals, and anyway, you will want to put all your focus on ds. I got really irritated with endless calls on the bedside phone, and stopped giving out the number. Sounds hard, I know, but when your priority is a woozy child, other people become a distraction.

Thanks Blu. Most of my family is abroad so only my mother to call. Good advice though. I remember that happening when I gave birth.

My ds has had around 10 GA's - first at 10 weeks and most recent last October (he is 14 now).

It is always hard, I always cry and dh always has to do the 'going to theatre' bit. You'd have thought I'd have learned by now!!!

The benefits of babies and toddlers having ops is that they don't have the 'build up', but by the same token, you can't explain why they feel so grotty afterwards. But they usually bounce back pretty quickly - I do remember one op. for t-tubes in the morning, and we were outside planting bulbs in the afternoon.

Now, of course, ds is part of the conversations/decisions that are made, and he does get wound up when surgery is imminent. At around age 9/10 we hadn't used to give him the date until the last minute, but he's caught onto that trick now!

And there's always a pressie afterwards for being so brave - gets more expensive as they're older - it was an ipod last time

What I do always find is that having spent weeks (months) building up to an op., it happens and you're all recovering quickly, and it's perhaps not as bad as you were anticipating.

But we're mums, and we will always hate to see our babies suffering

an i-pod!!!! bloody hell, I thought I was over-doing it with an ill-thought-out flashing bath toy (he can't have a bath for 2 weeks) and a new game boy game.

I'm fine. I find the sight of them going under and the strangled noises and strange jerking movements totally traumatic, but other than that it's fine. One time ds came round really crying an unearthly distressed and distressing cry and it was very difficult to distract him and calm him down, but this time he litterally just opened his eyes, made a joke and tucked into the bowl of snacks (including lolly pop) the nurse handed him.

My DS had a GA last year, the procedure at the hospital he was in was that you went down to the pre-op room and waited until the child was unconscious, they then called me when he started to regain consciousness and I walked back to the ward with him. The hardest thing for me was that they couldnt get the canula (?) into his hand so he started to get anxious. All went well though, im sure it will be fine.

It was difficult though because although I told him to he wouldnt eat any breakfast, then they didnt do his op until 3pm by which time he & the other kids in his ward were ravenous.

I was getting light headed as I didnt like to eat in front of him & sent him off to the playroom when he came back he caught me eating a biscuit!!!

Take a good book or a magazine & try to keep yourself busy its hard but I knew if I didnt I would have worked myself into an anxious frenzy.

DS had surgery when he was 2y3m. He wasn't really aware of much of it, so we didn't do the role play thing. We did do a hospital tour the week before, but everyone else was an older child having their tonsils out.

The highlight of DS's hospital stay was getting a Thomas the Tank Engine duvet on his hospital bed.

As for handing them over to the anaesthetic team, you have to be convicted that you are doing the right thing by allowing him to have the operation. As others have said, you typically hold them in your arms as they administer the anaesthetic and then hand them over once they are asleep. A nurse tells you the moment they are in recovery, although it may be a while before they are brought to you.

DS's surgery lasted about 45 minutes and he was back with us after about 90 minutes. The rest of the day we spent watching him sleep it off. The wasn't pleasant, but once we were home, he was almost back to himself - about 12 hours after the operation.

The worst part of the whole experience was the nil by mouth from the night before. DS did not understand why he was not allowed any breakfast.

About canulas and gas. (and I wish honeyBunny would come back - she may be able to give better advice here!).

DS had hid first couple of GAs with gas, because they told me it would be hard to get a canula into his hand at such a young age. This was borne out by the fact that each time he came back, he had the canula in his neck, and marks from failed attempts in both hands.

IF, as in Soulgirls' DS case, there is a lot of difficulty, I would ask (or insist) that they use gas first. They don't like doing this inneceesarily because they have to have 2 aneasthetists present, and there is a potential risk because they have an unconscious child but no iv canula in place should they need to administer some other drug quickly. That's why HoneyBunny said earlier that you need to leave immediately once your child is unconscious.

One time, I was faced with an aneasthetist wanting to use a canula - and no magic cream had been applied, either, I refused, because I didn't want DS to start having a bad experience, and knew that a canula had never been succesfully put in his hand, so I stood my ground and said 'no'.The nurse explained that they couldn't do the gas becuase there wasn't another aneasthetis in the room - and I said 'well get one then'. I saw the anaesthetist mentally tot up the currency of a full orthopeadic surgery team scrubbed up and waiting the other side of the swing doors, and another anaesthetist was summoned. Sure enough, DS came back with bruise marks in his hands and a canula in his neck, so I'm really pleased I didn't give in.

But for a slightly older child, and with the 'magic cream' applied, a canula will be fine, and the best method. Thats inmho, anyway.

I really do not want them doing the canula. I have small veins and horrendous experience of needles. My older ds needed blood taken recenelty and had magic cream. It did not work, and I felt terrible that I had promised him it would make sure he didn't feel anything and he ended up screaming the palce down. He also had an allergic skin reaction to the cream. As my younger son has excema, I just don't trust it at all. I am happy for them to use gas and I know that he will not be scared as he is always putting my older son's asthma mask to his face in play and has also had a nebuliser once with no problem. They will have a fight on their hands if they say no gas. However, the consultant gave me the impression that it was my choice which was used.

They used magic cream on my DS but they just couldnt find the vein in the 1st hand but I could see him getting THAT anxious look in his eyes when the started on the 2nd one. I kissed him lots and said "mummy loves you" over & over then walked out going "dont think about it, dont think about it"

Having said that they bounce back so quickly, he regards the whole thing as an adventure if we ever discuss it now.

Ilana - are you going in for pre-op assessment or will it be all done on the day? Either way you should meet the aneasthetist who'll be looking after your ds. Tell them how you feel and what you would like to happen. I know that's easy said but they will listen.

My dd has always had a canula so I don't have the experience of just gas. They did have a problem this last time as the magic cream didn't work and she has poor over used veins. She was a trooper though despite the messing around and the aneasthetist did a wonderful job raising her veins with a hot flannel. It took some time though and the ortho team were hopping from one foot to another waiting to start.