the nitty-gritty

I am really going to try my best to post pictures and video of Hayden and Connor more frequently. In the video below you can see Hayden's aversion to being "too close" to Connor right now. She is warming up .... slowly :)



I am slowly recovering from all the rediculousness of the hospital and the last 6 weeks. The c-section was kind of a grueling experience and I reacted poorly to the anesthesia. So, before the operation I was anemic, then lost quite a bit of blood during the c-section and so had to have a blood transfusion afterwards. My blood pressure dropped like crazy which required more drugs. Then the drugs that they put me on for the pre-eclampsia (horrible, horrible drugs) made me incredibly weak and gave me blurred vision for a day and a half. The anesthesia made me throw up repeatedly (which is not fun when you are trying to throw up without hurting the newly ripped hole in your stomach) and I wasn't able to keep anything down for a couple of days afterwards.

I think a mistake that I made upon leaving the hospital was to get a flu and whooping cough vaccination. A couple of days after leaving the hospital I kept getting the chills and had a fever. And the pain of the c-section was pretty bad. HOWEVER, all that being said, I am now two weeks out from the hospital and I am off all pain meds and getting stronger every day. I've thought about whether the vaginal birth was easier than the c-section and I honestly can't say. My birth with Hayden was horrendous (remember the epidural didn't work for one thing) and that took 14 hours to go through. So, at least the c-section was done in an hour. I guess if I had to say, I would prefer a birth that consisted of snap of the fingers, wiggle of the nose and poof! "welcome to the world Connor!" :)

On the positive side of things, I am happy to report that I have lost ALL of my baby weight plus almost 10 pounds more. So, halleluyah for that! :) We were very grateful that Connor was a strong, healthy, BIG baby that didn't have to stay in the NICU. We were both released with a bill of health 4 days after birth. Initially he lost quite a bit of weight (I think most babies lose some) but in the past week he has been gaining an ounce a day and is a voracious eater. He is almost frantic and feverish while eating and can down an entire bottle of breastmilk in about 5 minutes. We have to pace the child otherwise we will end up with spit up or throw up.

Connor has been such a delight as a baby. He is such a patient little guy and doesn't cry except when given a bath or changing a diaper and confronted with a cold wipe. (I really should find some wood to knock on!) He is sleeping most of the time, I figure that he's still making up for lost time in the womb. But when he's awake, he is curious... looks around quite a bit and gives us darling baby smiles.



We've been impressed with how strong his head and neck already are. Hayden is still getting used to things. I think she has been really good with Connor. She is a little skittish of him and not quite sure, but slowly she is getting more and more comfortable with him. She will rub his head, pat his back (helping us to burp him) and occasionally touch his hand, but that's about it. If you try and put him in her lap, she will move away. Our pediatrician made a good point though and said, that its probably better that way rather than having a big sister that was all over the new baby because then you have to worry about her stepping on him or trying to hold him but dropping him, etc... So, we're content for Hayden to just take her time and warm up slowly.



She is quite perplexed with the breast pump and breastfeeding. She stands quite still, with her mouth open and you can just see her little brain trying to figure out what the heck is going on! It was funny because the other day I was working on this breastfeeding thing (I gotta be honest, I'm not a huge fan) and Hayden was watching me in her "what the heck" pose and she became very concerned and put her hand gently on Connor's check and kept repeating "No no baby" "No no" and I think what she was worried about was that he was biting me. :) It made me laugh and touched me that she was worried about me.



Well, that's all the big of news for now. I really will try and be good about posting new pics and video of us all. I will also leave you with a video of Hayden's first sledding adventure with her daddy. We got our first serious snowfall the other week. She had a blast!