Adam is here!

Adam Peter Hall Bird (or Adam Bird for short) was delivered by a normal caesarean section, at 9:35 am yesterday morning (11/10/11 - a good birthday!).  He weighed in at 1 lb 7oz/ 647g, so a good bit chunkier than we thought he might be, but nevertheless, really tiny.  He's doing well so far, so we're hoping that he keeps on as he's started.  He's a little wriggler and mews little cries like a kitten, which is a good sign that he's a goer, but we don't want him wasting too much energy on all that when he could be doing growing.  We've not been able to pick him up yet, and won't for a couple of weeks, while his skin gets tougher in a humidified atmosphere.  We can touch him, though, and the nurse showed us today how to hold him gently but securely with our hands while he lies in his incubator.  It doesn't really feel like we can do much for him, which is hard, but it's good for him that he has such a good team in the neonatal unit (one nurse to one or two babies).  Family Hall-Bird have been doing what we can, however, by team milk expressing.   There have been only drops so far, but Mum had the technique to get the first ones to come out, and Chris has become an expert at collecting them in a little syringe.  They should start feeding them to Adam today.  Hopefully my milk will actually come in soon and there'll be a bit more to show for it, though, as even if they feed him at the low rate of 0.5ml every 4 hours, I reckon we've got less than 12 hours supply from the first 6 attempts at expressing! 

It's basically gone as well as we could have hoped for.  I'm fine.  It was really good that they managed to do a normal caesarean rather than a classic (more damage, more risks, always need caesarean in future), the operation was early in the day, everything has been a picture of smooth efficiency and most importantly, Adam is doing fine so far.  While it sort of feels like we're waiting for things to go wrong, it's better than dealing with things being wrong.  And as George the consultant obstetrician says, we should take my blood group as a catchphrase: B positive!