Its a Boy!

Baby Quinlan is here! He weighed 7 pounds, 13 ounces and is 19 1/4 inches long. I am so in love with this little man! Here is a look at O's first four days of life!

January 4th - O's Birthday

O is only a few hours old in the next two pictures. We are waiting on the nursery to take him for testing because he was running a fever at birth (so was I).

O has a high white blood cell count. His Pediatrician came to check him out and decided to err on the safe side and give him an IV for antibiotics. Poor guy! He is a trooper, though!! So, they inserted the IV and then took blood and sent it off for testing--then we had to wait 48 hours to learn the results and know for sure whether or not he has any infection.

Here are pictures of O with Daddy and Grammie on his Birthday!

January 5th - One day Old (Grammie & Paw Paw Mac's 17th Anniversary)

O has a lot of visitors!! Thank you to everyone who came by!!

O with his Grandpa...

O meets his friend Mr. N--they are 6 months apart and will go to school together! Hard to believe that one day their age difference won't seem as great as it does in this photo. N's dad and I were born on the same day and went to school together Kindergarten through Bachelor's Degree from college! Neat that our kids will probably be in the same grade, too!

Some friends came by... thier 14 month old was sound asleep in his stroller behind the curtain!

More friends came by. Here are the proud Dad's with their little ones! Look at Miss E's sweet smile! Love it!

And last, but not least, the Hoyles came over. O really liked his "Uncle Nige"! Grammie enjoyed listening to all of the English accents in the room!



O also had his first photo shoot today. Melanie Johnson of Melanie Johnson Photography came and took some amazing photos of him! She truly captured the many faces of O. It is unbelievable how many little faces he makes right now and I am blessed to have the moments she caught on film to cherish. These first days will go by so fast and I don't want to forget how he looked, smelled, and felt. Her photos will enable me to always go back to these moments and remember the smell of his hair, the snorts and grunts he makes when he eats (I call him Piglett), and the soft touch of his skin. Thank you so much, Melanie!

January 6th - Two Days Old and Going Home from the Hospital!

First, O had his hearing checked. This was really neat. The specialist came in and put ear muffs on each ear. She had sensors she put in three places on his head to measure his brain's response to the sounds. O passed with flying colors!

Then, O's Pediatrician came in to give him a check up. He was officially released from the hospital, pending the completion of his last round of antibiotics! Yeah--his IV came out. As of 11:00 AM when the doctor was there, all of his cultures had come back fine. We would know officially at 7:00 PM if there was anything to be concerned about--and there wasn't! Thank goodness--I don't know how I would have left him in the hospital and gone home without him. It would have been so hard.



Then, my midwife, Aliza, came by and officially released me to go home! Aliza is was absolutely amazing! Thank you for helping me to safely bring O into this world--what an experience it was!

We are out of here! I can't wait to see the outdoors--I had been in the hospital for 97 hours!

So...off we go! It took us so long to get O into the car seat that Daddy could probably have pushed us in the wheelchair the whole way and we'd have been home sooner. But, instead Daddy drove us very safely home in the car--the 1.5 mile trip went by very quickly ;-) Don't worry, his feet were covered with a blanket and it was 75 degrees out. We just had to snap a quick pic of this, cause it looked so funny!

January 7th - Three days old & first full day at home

Wow...can a baby really eat that much? We got very little sleep as O turned into quite the oinker last night. Wanted to eat for 30 minutes every hour and a half. Unreal. We started off with Dad checking the diaper and getting O alert enough to eat. Then, I would feed him and go back to bed. Then, we would hear him stir, start his little "I'm hungry" clues and start again. Finally, at 3AM we decided that our plan wasn't working on this particular feeding cycle ;-) So, Dad got some shut eye and I just stayed up with O. I slept for about 30 minutes total on the couch between the 3AM, 4:30AM, 6AM feeding--really, that often and HE woke up for each of them wanting to eat AND ate for 30 minutes each time. Then, Dad got up at 7--I fed O again and Dad hung out with him so I could get some sleep. I managed to sleep until 9:30 or so. It was great! Today, he has slowed the pace to the "normal" every 2 - 3 hours. Let's hope that lasts through the night!

Here is our alert little guy at 10AM this morning--very content after all of that eating last night!!

I couldn't resist taking a picture of him napping this afternoon. His fist under his chin is contemplative and oh so cute! It looks like he is having a very serious dream! He must be deciding whether or not he will let Mommy and Daddy have some sleep tonight--have we been good enough today, O?

O met Mimi today! She will be taking care of him once I go back to work. I think he really likes her! Mimi's daughters thought O was quite cute--we look forward to having them baby-sit in a few months!

We are so blessed to have O in our life. He is such a sweet baby and has given us so much joy already. I want to capture every little moment to be sure that I don't forget them! I just love sitting with him in the window watching him look at his world around him. He is particularly drawn to Tobie--we think he ponders whether or not every house has a big black dog with an under-bite!

Signing off to go and feed Piglett...