Baby Abe's Birth and the NICU

Baby Abe is here! His full name is Abraham Malachi McGladrey. He was born on August 13th at 7:37 p.m. weighing in at 7 lbs 12 ounces and 20 1/2 inches long (and three weeks early!). The delivery was amazing and they insisted on skin to skin with him and I for one hour after delivery. Shortly thereafter, he was checked and they noticed he was in respiratory distress, so he was whisked off to the NICU, where he has been ever since.

Currently, Abe is on a CPAP machine to help him breath (but as of last night he was down to room air!) and he has a chest tube because he got a pneumo thorax (from fighting the CPAP machine- something bigger babies do because they are much stronger than preemies) and they put surfactant in his lungs - which have made a huge difference in his recovery.

We are hoping Abe can come home late this week, but that all depends on him. He is taking my milk every three hours thru a g-tube and as he gets better, I will bottle feed him and then hopefully nurse from there.

I must dash off to the hospital for the day, but I will leave you with a couple of birth pics of our sweet boy.

We can't believe how dark his hair is - just like Papa's! This was his first bath:And here we are having skin to skin shortly after delivery:
I can't believe how chunky he is!