Introducing!

My fabulous new daughter, Cora!

Now you know you can't get through this without the story. Fortunately, this was less stressful than when my son was born.

We showed up at the hospital at the predetermined time of 9 am, to get ready for the 11 am surgery. When we got there, though, they told us the doctor had been called away to another hospital and would be late. Dang. So we hung around for a couple of hours until he popped into the room like a magician. He asked if we were ready, and said we'd get started in about 20 minutes. So we headed from the pre-delivery area to post-delivery, where the OR is located. They had us get into our scrubs, put Mrs. Dave on the table, etc. Here's a shot of us just before we went into the OR.



So, we get into the OR. It's the same one my son was born in. There's something neat about the fact they were born in the exact same place.

The operation went very smoothly and at 2:41 pm on Sept. 18th 2006, Cora was born! I'm going to put a few extra breaks in here to say WARNING: The photo below is NOT for the squeamish! It's really not that bad, there's not much blood and you can't see any part of my wife because she's all covered, but it's of the baby in the precious little time the are just "natal". Not prenatal or postnatal, just natal.














Cora was 7lbs, 6 oz. and 20 3/4 inches long. It's weird, with both kids, when the doctor pulls them out, they look like rubber dolls.

Here she is at about 2 minutes old.


A few minutes later (don't worry, the blood is just cord blood, no one was hurt in the making of this photo):


Here is the proud big brother and his mommy with Cora:


And here is big brother giving his new little sister her first Pooh bear:



This one is kinda freaky, but you didn't think I'd let the opportunity to do a long exposure shot go to waste, do you? Cora was a bit jaundiced, and this is one of the ways they treat it, using light therapy. She was on this bed for about 24 hours.



Here are a couple of her on the way home. Kinda makes you wonder if they think about actual babies when they design car seats...




Here are a couple from when we got home.




She's terrific, though. She's had a bit of acid reflux and constipation, but even with that, she's not a screecher. She's quite content and happy to look around when she's not eating or sleeping. ;-). But I can already tell she's got me wrapped around her little finger! How could I not be with that face?

Dave