LONG OVERDUE

A week shy of 2 months after Connor's birth I am FINALLY finding the time to actually update this thing. I have wanted to since the beginning, but well.... life got in the way. Guess that tends to happen when your free time is no longer really free.

The last post I had on here was stating that my induction date was set. We made it to that date with no signs of labor until an hour before I was set to be at the hospital. I was having pretty bad contractions by the time we got me checked in, but not surprisingly they weren't productive and I was still only 1cm. Long story short- the induction sucked. I wont be one of those people that sits here and blames the Pitocin for all of my pain because I was in loads of pain the 10 hours I was there before I even had the Pitocin drip in. I'm just rather certain that my body just did not want to be in labor, hence the reason we had to force it 9 days after my due date. I think the uncontrollable shaking was just as bad as the contractions. I was in active labor for around 27 hours and I ended up pushing for 3 hours. Sounds fun right ;-)

The cliche is totally true, the second that little baby is placed on your chest all of the hell that you just endured is totally worth it, and then some.

We had a rough start with Connor and I'm still not 100% sure what my emotions/feelings are on the whole situation. I kinda feel like I got ripped off. Here we were thinking that Connor was 100% healthy and he obviously wasn't a premie and when my water bag broke it was completely clear... all was good. We went from being in our "everything will be perfect" world to them taking him away from us after only 45 minutes, returning him the next day and then 30 minutes later another Dr. coming in and escorting us and him down to the NICU where a team of nurses immediately surrounded him and start poking and prodding while their faces don't hide the shock when they heard what his blood counts where. Those ladies REALLY need to work on their poker faces.

In the end everything is 100% fine and Connor is a healthy little boy. Those 11 days in the NICU where no fun though. I attached a picture of his tiny little foot with the iv in it so you can all feel bad for him ;-( Even while we were there we couldn't help but feel blessed. Here was Connor laying in a normal bassinet weighing in over 8 lbs in a room with 2lb babies that cant be taken out of their ventilators or held by their poor parents. One of our favorite nurses even told us that ladies were calling "dibs" on who got Connor on their next shift since they aren't used to being able to hold normal size healthy babies.

We have been home now for a while and it didn't take us nearly as long as I was expecting to get used to the whole baby thing. We had (have) our long nights where Connor doesn't like to sleep, but normally he sleeps for at least a 4 hour stretch at night which is nice. Feeding is NOT an issue of ours, he is around 12lbs now! Our doctor jokes that he is fattening up for Winter, which me and Anthony don't find too funny..especially since winter is over ;-)
Its AMAZING how fast they change. I look at pictures that we took while we were at the hospital and I look at him now and feel like he's a completely different baby. We were so terrified of hurting him while we were at the hospital (the IV's and wires didn't help) that we treated him like a piece of china. We quickly learned once he got home that he is not nearly as fragile as we thought. He holds his head up for longer and longer periods of time every day and has just started cooing and talking back to me throughout the day.

As he gets more and more alert we are trying to take him different places around town. This past weekend we took a little family trip to La Jolla and laid down on the grass and hung out for an hour or so. I think he enjoyed the sounds of the waves.

My goal is to now update the blog at least once a week, which I think wont be an issue at all. There are lots of changes and things happening around here so I need to keep this thing up to date!