Conner's Dramatic Beginnings, Part 2

As I mentioned last time, Conner was delivered by C-Section on his scheduled date.  He weighed in at a whopping 7 pounds and 5 ounces and was 19 and 1/2 inches long.  This was quite a shock to us.  We both expected him to be as tiny as Carter was (5 pounds and 4 ounces).

We heard those first wonderful, life changing cries from him, and then the doctors took him away to perform tests on him and to make sure his heart was doing okay after delivery.  Everybody was happily surprised to see how he was doing, so Josh was able to go back with the doctors and see him and then they were able to bring him out for me to see him as well.

After I was out of surgery our families were able to come up and see me as well as see Conner in the NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) recovery area for about 15-20 minutes.  The grandma's came up first and saw that we were both doing well, so they brought Carter up to meet his little brother.  I was sad to have missed this moment, but I hear that he was so excited to see him and so proud to be a big brother.  I think these pictures speak a million words!

Conner was taken away for a couple of hours in order to get some medical equipment put into his umbilical cord.  There were two things that went in there, one was for feeding and the other was to monitor his blood pressure.  They wanted to do this as an extra precaution in addition to monitoring his heart rate.  Of course Josh could give you the details on what they were called, but I am less technical than he is!  Because of this, Conner wasn't able to be held or fed for the first two days.

But we were able to get lots of pictures of him through his little OmniBed.  The tubes and cords and plastic walls couldn't keep my camera away!

Conner's increased size of course was a great benefit to him being full-term.  But another benefit was that the UofM Children's hospital has moved into their new building before he was born.  This meant that instead of having a large nursery with all of the NICU babies in it, each child had their own room.  While all of the nurses might have found this to be more work, for Josh and I it was very nice to just go down to Conner's room for the day and set up shop.  We brought all of our electronic gadgets so we could keep up on the important things like this blog and Facebook while passing the time. 

Here are some pictures of his room as well as a picture of our favorite nurse, Janet.  She took great care of Conner as well as both of us in our first few days there.