Conor Davin Milligan arrived on October 3, 2015 at 11:16 pm.
He is such a cute boy! We love him so much!
I started having contractions on his actual due date, and given that Finn's entire labor lasted four and a half hours I didn't want to waste any time getting to the hospital this time around. So, of course, by the time we got there my contractions had stopped and we were thinking that we would be sent home. However, the nurse decided to strap on a heart rate monitor before sending us off. She found that he had a really low base heart rate and some erratic beating and the doctor decided that it was in his best interests to just get him out already. I'm not usually a fan of forcing babies out before they are ready, but given that he'd had an erratic heart rate and skipped heart beats through most of my pregnancy as well we agreed that it was time for him to be seen on the outside.
So we got all checked in and set up for induction. It was not enjoyable. I'd heard that pitocin induced contractions were way more painful than regular ones, but that was not my experience. I still think Finn's labor was way more painful than this one. It's just that this one took so. darn. long. Baby boy was not ready to vacate. It was almost a full 24 hours after we got there that he decided to join us. It was really discouraging being in labor with him, every time the doctor would come check I was just stuck at three cm for hours. I got my epidural relatively early on in the process so that the doctor could break my water to try to encourage him to move things along. It didn't work. What it did do was give my epidural plenty of time to stop working the way it should and start numbing my ribs and thighs instead of the actual painful parts. Shortly after we got there the doctors changed shifts and I was excited to have my favorite one on duty. She was the one who delivered Finn, too. At about hour 22 we asked her at what point we would have to re-evaluate our plan. I had been sitting at 3 cm for the past 18 hours and was getting pretty discouraged. She said that since I'd had three other successful deliveries she was going to let me hang out on the pitocin for at least another 24 hours before she even thought about a c-section. I appreciated that she wasn't going to push us in to an unnecessary c-section but the thought of another 24 hours on the pitocin was pretty horrifying as well. Induction was definitely the right choice for Conor, given his heart stuff, but I would never want to do it again unless absolutely necessary.
Luckily only about an hour later Conor decided he was ready to make his entrance. Once he decided to come he didn't waste any time and two sets of three pushes later he was here.
It's been interesting having our past three babies at the same hospital and seeing how much they have changed since we had Nora. They put him on my chest immediately and let us just hold him there for as long as we wanted. They did all his suctioning and what not while we held him instead of pulling him over to the side and away from us.
He is our tiniest baby yet, he only weighed in at 7 pounds 10 ounces and was 19 and 3/4 inches long. He is also our first baby that didn't come out sunny side up! I was pretty surprised because I had lots of awful back labor with him just like with the others so I assumed it was because he was facing the wrong direction.
The girls had been anxiously awaiting his arrival for quite awhile, they were thrilled to finally get to meet him. Finn was so sweet, that is the longest he has ever been away from me, so when they got to the hospital he immediately climbed on my bed and gave me a ton of snuggles. Then he turned to Conor's little bed and said "I hold dis". They all loved him so much and Nora and Finn especially put up quite the fuss about letting anyone else have a turn at holding him.
Poor Granny, her plane got in at 8 pm and we were headed to the hospital only a few hours later.
We love him so much and feel so blessed to have him in our family.
