Baby Niall is here (...well, 2 months ago)

Wow, I'll try to keep this post at a reasonable length because I could go on forever. Obviously, I had the baby quite some time ago. He was due November 14 and it's now January 25. That goes to show you how insane the first 2 months are. I literally haven't had one spare second to write on this blog. It makes me really sad because so many fun things have happened and I've probably forgotten a lot of them since I haven't been good about documenting them.

Ok, details:
Name: Niall Patrick McCullough
Weight: 7 pounds, 3 oz
Height: 20-21 inches?? (hospital vs pediatrician)
DOB: November 22, 2009 (yes, 8 days past the due date- ugh)

So, I'll try to post twice a week so I won't have to write ridiculously long posts from now on. We'll see how that goes. Let me start with the birth story- very different from what I had hoped for...

As you know from my previous post, I was hoping for an all natural birth. What a joke... I went in for a non-stress test on Nov. 20 and they didn't like the fetal heart reading so they wanted to induce me. They weren't extremely concerned, but didn't want to take a chance. No! anything but induction! I asked if this was really necessary because I knew this would ruin my birth plan. The doctor proceeded to persuade me by mentioning that she's seen babies with perfect heart rates who died the next day. Well thanks doc- I guess we'll be inducing then. Like I don't live with enough Irish Catholic guilt...

We went into the hospital that afternoon, November 20th and after 40 hours of labor (24 with no meds, 12 with epidural and pitocin, 4 hours c-section prep and delivery), he was finally born on November 22. 2 days of labor!!! We literally went in at noon on Friday and he was delivered a minute after noon on Sunday. Oh my goodness- not what I had prepared for at all. Ok, enough moping about the miserable labor. Let me get to the good stuff...

Niall is sooo advanced (not just because he's mine- I swear!). He picked up his head the day after he was born and has been supporting it on his own ever since. He started smiling at 1 month (ok, he was pooping at the time, but still). At about 7 weeks, he was smiling directly at us intentionally. We brought him home from the hospital 3 days after he was born and he gave us the shock of his first "explosive shart", as we like to call them. It was about 3 minutes long, I'm not kidding, and Matt and I looked at each other thinking, "that noise and smell couldn't possibly have come out of that baby, could it??". He had pooped up the back of his diaper all the way up to his neck and out the bottom, down his leg into his sock! I was laughing so hard, I thought my stitches were going to pop open.

Ok, that's enough for now. My next post will be about my breastfeeding experience. I'm not sure that I'm cut out for all this natural stuff!