Hoping for some advice. DS (20 months) is an active nursling. He's most attached to his middle of the night session (between 2 and 4am) and his morning session as soon as he wakes up. He is having surgery for a cleft lip in just over two weeks. He's had one previous surgery, but was just 3 mos old then.
For this surgery, we were originally told that he could nurse up to 4 hrs in advance - surgery is at 9:30am, so his last session would be 5:30am. Well...we just had our pre-op appt with the surgeon and he says b/c DS is "so old" he needs to have his last session at 3:30am, which is 6 hrs in advance of the surgery.
We have to arrive at the hospital at 7:30am. I'm staring to feel very anxious about the time between 3:30 and 7:30. He can have pedialyte, water or gatorade until 5:30am, but I don't think he'll accept those as substitutes.
He generally sleeps better when I'm not in the bed, but he still comes running to me for his morning session when he wakes up. I've thought about sleeping in a different room that night and then starting some kind of really active play when he wakes up to distract him - maybe playdough or something he's never seen before.
I've also thought of changing the surgery to a later time of day, but we'd need to wait another 6 months to get in for that and this sounds terrible, but our plastic surgeon is not young at all and I fear he'll retire or something. He's very well respected in cleft repair and I'd hate to not have him around for our surgery.
It's frustrating b/c I thought all of this thru when we originally scheduled this surgery 6 mos ago, and now things have changed. It's difficult enough to send my LO off for anesthesia w/out me, and I really need to find a way to make sure he's not upset the morning of his surgery, which would make it nearly impossible for me to send him off.
Should I start trying to night wean him for the next couple of weeks? Or give gatorade when he wakes up and try to cut out the morning session.
Any suggestions?
For this surgery, we were originally told that he could nurse up to 4 hrs in advance - surgery is at 9:30am, so his last session would be 5:30am. Well...we just had our pre-op appt with the surgeon and he says b/c DS is "so old" he needs to have his last session at 3:30am, which is 6 hrs in advance of the surgery.
We have to arrive at the hospital at 7:30am. I'm staring to feel very anxious about the time between 3:30 and 7:30. He can have pedialyte, water or gatorade until 5:30am, but I don't think he'll accept those as substitutes.
He generally sleeps better when I'm not in the bed, but he still comes running to me for his morning session when he wakes up. I've thought about sleeping in a different room that night and then starting some kind of really active play when he wakes up to distract him - maybe playdough or something he's never seen before.
I've also thought of changing the surgery to a later time of day, but we'd need to wait another 6 months to get in for that and this sounds terrible, but our plastic surgeon is not young at all and I fear he'll retire or something. He's very well respected in cleft repair and I'd hate to not have him around for our surgery.
It's frustrating b/c I thought all of this thru when we originally scheduled this surgery 6 mos ago, and now things have changed. It's difficult enough to send my LO off for anesthesia w/out me, and I really need to find a way to make sure he's not upset the morning of his surgery, which would make it nearly impossible for me to send him off.
Should I start trying to night wean him for the next couple of weeks? Or give gatorade when he wakes up and try to cut out the morning session.
Any suggestions?
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