The Hospital stay....

After the surgery we had to stay in the hospital for 48 hours, during which time the girls had to lay flat...they could lay flat on their backs or on their sides but that was it. Talk about hard, try to keep a 2.5 year old laying flat for 2 days.
Our nurses were amazing. We were in the PICU for the entire time but for the first day we were in an older more compact side of the PICU, there were 4 regular beds and 2 isolation rooms. It was noisy and difficult to relax. Most kids there were pretty sick and our girls were by far the least sick of the bunch. But they were needy considering they needed to have meds regularly...since day one they were getting morphine.
The girls slept a lot and we were able to relax a bit too. Sleeping was another story, they had "sleeping" chairs for the parents but the should consider renaming them to torture chairs instead. They were the most uncomfortable chairs ever.
On Friday morning they had to move Natalie to the other side of the PICU because some of the other kids in the PICU needed more care and had to be one-to-one. So at 7 Natalie got moved to the newer side of the PICU and Addison was kept in the older side.
We begged and pleaded with the nurses and doctors and were finally moved to the other side with Natalie. Ultimately it wouldn't have been the end of the world if we'd had to stay on opposite sides but it would have been hard on Natalie. Especially since to get between the two PICUs we had to go through 2 secure doors.
At any rate the amazing nurses were able to get us moved so that we were in the same room, not next to each other but in the same room...which was great!
The second day went well, Natalie had some visitors which kept her happy, and Addi was busy charming the nurses.
Dan and I were able to get some sleep that night and our amazing nurse read some books to Natalie when she woke up so that Dan could sleep. We really couldn't have been more lucky with our nursing staff...they were compassionate and caring and really went above and beyond to make sure that not only the girls were well taken care of but that we were comfortable too.

On Saturday we were discharged and made it home uneventfully. Once we got home and scarfed down some lunch we all fell asleep on the couch....and took a nice 2 hour family nap.

The girls have been doing great, getting better each day. They are down to just regular Tylenol and are able to do almost everything they could do before. I think by this weekend they will be good as new. I planned to take 2 weeks off with them, and I probably don't need to take the entire time off...but really who wants to go to work if they don't have to, so I'll probably stay home next week just to spend more time with them.

I want to thank everyone for their well wishes, thought, and prayers. We really appreciate every ones support and could not have made it through without all of you!