Kara's Surgery...

First, and foremost thank you to everyone for all of your prayers and encouragement through Kara's surgery. What a blessing to have such amazing friends and family that we knew were praying for sweet Kara. Your prayers were definitely felt, heard, and answered.

The day of the surgery kara was not to eat or drink anything. Luckily it was scheduled for 9:30am. She did really well handling that! The few weeks leading up to the surgery, Kara was surprisingly very excited about going to Cooks. We did not tell her much. Just that she was staying overnight in the hospital and that daddy and mommy would be with her. We told her she was having surgery to help her bladder and tummy feel better and she never asked questions. I think she honestly thought "no big deal, I get to hang out with just mommy and daddy and have them all to myself!"

Here she is the morning of, very excited to ride in daddy's truck :)

I will have to say up to the day of the surgery I had not gotten nervous at all. I knew that this was the best thing for Kara and knew that the Lord was taking care of her. BUT, I think I just did not allow myself to become nervous. It was all business, get the other kids taken care of, complete paper work, pay the bill, get Kara situated. Life kept me busy and not thinking about it until the morning of. I prayed a lot that morning :) I think what really got me was seeing children and babies laying on hospital beds crying and hooked up to machines. I felt for those kiddos. Probably a lot of them were really sick or having big operations. Not to lessen Kara's surgery by any means, but she was not sick, just needed surgery to keep her from getting sick. Regardless, seeing any child on a hospital bed is VERY hard to witness. BUT seeing your own child on a hospital bed was one of the hardest things to bear. I tried to keep it together for Kara because she was fine at the hospital. Smiles and chatty :) She did get scared as soon as she saw our urologist. For whatever reason, he scares her :(

This is her and I after he left the room. Kameron's dad joined us at the hospital as well.

The nurses came to wheel her off to anesthesia. I lost it. So did Kara. I had to let my baby go and trust that the doctors and nurses took care of her. That was extremely hard. I had no control anymore. But, she stopped crying very quickly and was wheeled away.

So the surgery took about an hour and a half which seemed like eternity! We were told 2-3 hours...thank goodness we did not have to wait too long!

Here she is about 15 minutes out of surgery and awake from anesthesia. They gave her a very special posicle. Kara did not talk much but when she did she wanted to tell me about colors :)

She just kept smiling at us and seemed very relaxed....pain meds are great!

Daddy watching his baby girl...

Once we got to her room, we had unlimited movies and popsicles. Kara did not want anything eat other than an occasional sip of juice. She watched Cars, The Princess and the Frog, and Toy Story. Mema gave her a great Strawberry Shortcake play set that we played with.

Around 6:30pm, Kara finally fell asleep! Poor girl did not want to miss a thing!

Kara was hooked up to a heart monitor, iv and catheter. It was sad to see our baby like this....

The next day was a bit harder. Kara was coming off of the honeymoon of the anesthesia and pain meds and realized all the things that were hooked up to her. They removed the catheter and they helped to relieve a bit of tension. She had a lot of bladder spasms that scared her as well throughout the day. She just wanted to walk around. I think this helped relieve the tension on her bladder.

Sister and brother came up to visit. This brightened her spirits! Cooks has a great playroom that we were able to play in.

We sat around most of the day and took occasional walks. After a 2 hour much needed nap, here she is smiles and all! Eating cheetohs!!! hey, this was the first thing she actually would eat in 48 hours! We got to leave arond 7pm.

When we got home, Kate and Kara acted like they had not seen eachother in ages! There were embraces, kisses, and lots of chatting! They played together on the top bunk until bedtime :)

Kara has done beautifully. Ocassional bladder spasms at night to begin but that was expected. She went to school this week with no problems. It is amazing how quickly kids bounce back! I cannot believe she has a 4 inch incision on her belly!

Thank you again for your prayers. This was a hard things to go through but we see the fruits of it already.