If Your Toddler Needs Open Heart Surgery

The concept for this blog post was originally created for babies who need open heart surgery. I am now expanding on this to create suggestions for toddlers who need open heart surgery. We are hereby soliciting experienced advice to help other parents prepare for this situation! We want this to be an ongoing project

• If you have any ideas and/or short anecdotes to contribute, please put them in replies to this post for us to consider. We put quotation marks around all the advice that came from friends. 
• If you are a relative or friend of the toddler’s parents, please check out the last section of this page for ideas of how you can help lift their load. 
• Thank you to everyone who is helping to contribute to this list!

First, check out the inspiration for this project which contains a huge list of hospital survival techniques. http://www.chdknowledge.com/2012/05/if-your-baby-needs-open-heart-surgery.html 

Travel

• If you need to travel by plane and need financial assistance or have a particularly fragile child you may want to check out the air charity network.

Things to Bring

• A pic of the family to put by his bed.
• toddlers sippy cup/bottle
• lovey to comfort with
• his own socks as him being a sensory kid he hates the sticky socks.
• button down pjs
• If old enough a handheld game or ipad.

Entertainment

• favorite toy and some new ones.
• when Broc had OHS I raided the dollar store and walmart.I bought a HUGE gift bag and filled it with books,cars,trucks,crayons,color book,stickers,spinning lights.He loved that.
• bubbles and a new dvd.
• I did buy some bigger items too that were special.
• Everyday I would pull out something new or after a nasty IV poke or tube pull.

Hospital Life

Emotions

Other Considerations

Family and Friends