Vernon Volumes text

Vernon Volumes text

Saturday, March 31, 2007

Connor's girl-friend came to visit!


Maia swung by today to visit. She's not exactly his 'girlfriend', but she is a girl and is a friend of the family. Does that make her a 'girlfriend'? It just might. Connor kind of played it cool and pretended to sleep, and Maia was more interested in Chloe.

Link to Maia's blog:
Maia's Blog

Grandma Genie's cross stitched quilt

Grandma Genie poured a lot of time and love into an awesome quilt for Connor. He sat and admired it for a while last night:


Connor also loved Grandma Genie spending some more time with him last week. Here they are hanging out with the quilt:

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Grandma Invasion

Last week Grandma Genie stayed through the week to help with Connor, and this week Grandma Alice is here. They both have been a big help and it has been great having them here to share this experience with us. We've gotten more sleep than we have since Connor was born and the Grandmas have probably gotten less sleep than they have in years.

We really appreciate their help, thanks!!




Friday, March 16, 2007

Professional Connor Pictures!!

We went to Moments and Memories Photography to get some pictures of our little baby boy and the photographer Jennifer Frechin did a great job.

For anyone that wants to order any photos, you will get 15% off if you order within the first week.

Jennifer's got a lot of experience shooting newborns and some of the pictures are priceless. Connor was a bit fussy at times, but Jennifer had a lot of tricks to make him relax. Unfortunately he relaxed a bit too much at one point and made a mess. Well, actually he made 2 messes. It's horribly dangerous shooting pictures of naked babies, but we think the results are fantastic.

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Bathtime!!!


Oh poor baby Connor. We are going to take some family pictures today and had to torture the little baby so he'd look good. He definitely didn't like the bath and fought back with pee, but his Mommy and Daddy have learned and they had a towel over him this time.

Well, at least it was nice when we washed his little head. He likes that, and he likes looking at his pretty Mommy:

Monday, March 5, 2007

Quick video

This video is a little out of order chronologically, but we really like it. It's a video of the moment I came into the waiting room to announce that we had a boy. The video starts just after I say: "It's a boy!" Some quick things to notice:
1) Drew (our young nephew) was hoping for a boy and does a Tiger Woods fist pump.
2) Our families are loud. Dr. Morris, the doctor that delivered Connor, said that everyone on the nurse unit could hear our families screaming.
3) Towards the end of the video I said: "I'm the only one who voted for him on the blog". At the time of delivery the votes were 23% boy and 77% girl. Everyone voting on the poll now that Connor's been born are cheaters!

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Connor is home!


Connor came home today!

Chloe, our puppy dog, met him for the first time and has been very good around him. She really doesn't know what to think about him yet, but she's been very curious around him and thankfully has been very calm as well.

WARNING!! Circumcision and poop discussed below!!

This morning, just as his circumcision was getting underway he decided to fight back a little and almost managed to pee on everyone. Our doctor told us a stream of pee almost blasted her and she had to jump out of the way. I'm told he actually didn't even mess the table he was on, all of it shot clear to the floor. Well, he was supposed to be discharged only after he peed again following the circumcision, but since he clearly had gone right before the circumcision they allowed him to go home.

Around 8:00 tonight we were settling down for the night and were starting to get worried that he still hadn't urinated since his operation. We checked his diaper again and since he still hadn't done his business we decided to call the hospital. Just as Andrea got a nurse on the line Connor started working his arms and legs around and I clearly heard him poop. He'd been pretty gassy earlier, so when I told Andrea, she told the nurse: "He just farted." I said: "No, I'm sure he pooped." We checked his diaper while we were on the phone and sure enough there was a good amount of poop. The nurse said to call back if he still hadn't urinated by morning, and we got ready to change our first messy diaper at home.

When we put him down on the changing table we opened up Connor's diaper to asses the situation and he decided that was a good time for some more poop. We closed it back up and Andrea decided we should wait and be totally sure he was done before we got started. I had some unpacking to do so I left Andrea alone with baby after I asked whether she had everything under control. A few minutes later she came and said she needed some help. I was pretty shocked with how disgusting our baby was when I got into the room. Apparently we hadn't closed off his diaper very well since we did our visual inspection and he had poop half way up his back and all over his clothes. Connor was totally naked now and screaming. His whole body was turning red he was so angry. I started wiping his back down and thankfully Andrea was holding him face down because he decided to fight us off with his secret weapon. Pee.

It would have been upsetting if it wasn't for three reasons. First, we were really wanting him to pee since it had been a long time since he'd gone last. Secondly, because Andrea was holding him in such a way that it all went onto the changing pad. Third, because the sight of a poop covered baby peeing all over the place is just so disgusting it's funny. It's the kind of thing you see in movies or something. We just laughed. He is the cutest poop covered baby I've ever seen.

Well, that's more than enough for now, here are some more pictures of Connor from today:

Saturday, March 3, 2007

First baby pics




Early morning update...

Connor got his first bath late last night. He baked under a heating lamp for a half hour or so and his skin got pink all over. When the nurse started sponging him down he got furious. He tried to fight her off, arched his back and screamed his head off. His skin flushed bright pink during the bath, he got so angry he could hardly stand it. The nurse finished the bath my shampooing him. He had cried a bit earlier in the day when anyone would mess with his little hat and I thought maybe he didn’t like his head touched, but the shampooing was a whole different story. He quit crying right away, and really enjoyed himself as the nurse rubbed his head and then brushed it clean.

He had a little snack before bed last night and we finally all settled down around 1:30 or so. Amanda and Nathan brought me an air mattress, which saved me big time. No more sleeping on the horrible couch, I actually got a solid 4 hours of sleep and feel somewhat rested for the first time in a long time.

Andrea is sleeping still, she got some time to bond last night with baby Connor but she’s so exhausted she still doesn’t really feel like any of this is really real. She took a while to recover the use of her legs after the epidural. A nurse and I helped her into the shower last night before we switched rooms, and after the shower Andrea said that maybe she’d overdone it with trying to wash up so soon. She got a little dizzy, but once we got her into the new room she felt better. She did a great job yesterday pushing through the adversity and hurdles of the day. Her epidural was a horrible experience for her to get in, and even after it was in, it didn’t provide total pain relief like she’d expected. After a couple hours she was feeling the contractions again and was laboring through them. They upped the dose once, and that helped ease her discomfort for a couple hours, but the pain eventually came back. For quite a while before the pushing stage of labor she was hurting and asking for pain relief, but there wasn’t anything they could offer her at that point. If they upped the dose of her epidural it may have caused problems if they did a C-Section, so they just made her tough through it.

Andrea was pretty scared that the pain would be unbearable once she was required to start pushing, but that was actually the best pain relief of all. The nurse and doctor both were very impressed with Andrea’s pushing, and the actual delivery went much more quickly than I had imagined it would. I cut the umbilical cord after Connor was delivered, which is probably the hardest part, and I am pretty sure everyone was very impressed with how well I did it. I don’t want to take all the credit for the successful delivery, but I must say I handled those scissors very well and got the job done. I guess those arts and crafts classes in grade school really paid off after all.

Friday, March 2, 2007

IT'S A BOY!!

Connor Bishop Vernon was born at 8:43 p.m. on 3/2/2007. He weighed 6 pounds 9 ounces and was 20.5 inches long.

He is healthy, beautiful, and very cooperative. He cried like he was supposed to when he was born, but as long as nobody was fussing with him or bothering him he was content to just hang out and look around. Andrea is giving him his first meal right now and he's latching on very well.

He's absolutely gorgeous. You can see he's got a bit of Chinese in him, pretty slanty eyes like his poppa.

Andrea did an awesome job pushing. When they came in to get her going, she only had to go through about 7 or 8 series of pushes with 3 pushes each series.

Getting there...

Well, Andrea's over half way now and things are moving along better. I like to do hypothetical questions with people and I was asking my niece Allison who she'd marry if she was a princess and silly questions like that while our nurse was in here. On a whim, I asked our Nurse at around 4 p.m. what she thought would happen with this delivery based on her intuition and experience. She thought there was a 50/50 chance of a C-Section at that point and that if we did do a C-Section it would be at 6 and if it was a regular delivery it would be at 10.

Well, we managed to take a nap and at 5:45 our Doctor came in to do a check. They checked her cervix and had made the decision that if she hadn't progressed well that they would do the C-Section. They even had the paperwork put together and ready. Well, thankfully things had moved along. Andrea's at 5.5-6 cm, and for now at least they're going to let things go.

At one point, I guess our nurse was guessing there was a 70/30 chance in favor of a C-Section, but for now things are looking better.

Wish us luck!

All plugged in...

Andrea is much better emotionally and much more relaxed now that the epidural has kicked in. She's got eight wires/cables stuck into her, but she's pretty calm and pretty stable. Her mother, sisters, and Allison are here with us as well. My parents are probably on the way at this point, they're coming from St. Louis and Chris, Alex, and Abby (Chris's girlfriend) are coming today as well.

Andrea's dilated to a 3 now, and looks hot doing it. Hot Mama!!

My poor Andrea...

She's had a heck of a time so far. They took two tries to take her blood yesterday, two tries to get her IV in, and it took THREE tries to get her epidural in. It was really painful for her and she got through it, but she was pretty upset afterwards. After the emotional effects wore off, her pain is much better, but the poor thing really has had a tough time so far.

Water is broken!

Last night was definitely not the most comfortable night for either of us but we made it through and we got a little sleep.

This morning Andrea was started on Pitocin to get her labor moving and our doctor came in and broke her water at 9:00. Since then, her contractions have gotten more intense. Prior to this she would feel them, but could still talk and she looked more annoyed than anything when they came on. Now she is closing her eyes and has to work on her breathing to get through them. She says that they're coming on much more frequently.

When Dr. Morris broke her water she said she was dilated to 2 centimeters. So far so good, but my poor Andrea is looking like she's definitely feeling it more now.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

At the hospital

It's Thursday night and Andrea and I are at the hospital. They've got her hooked up to some machines to monitor the baby's heart rate and to take her blood pressure. They've put some goo on her cervix to soften it up and get it ready for labor. We're going to spend the night tonight and in the morning our doctor is going to come in and break her water. That should get the labor moving along and hopefully before long we'll have a baby!

The hospital isn't very hospitable for daddy. The couch pulls out into a bed, but it's probably a foot narrower than a twin bed... I'm not sure how much sleep I'll be getting on it, and I haven't gotten much sleep recently with all my nervous anticipation. This morning I was up at 4 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep.

Well, hopefully Andrea and I will both be able to get a reasonable amount of sleep before the big day tomorrow. Wish us all luck!!!