Better than expected

Needless to say, we had a lot of worries about what kind of shape Magnus would be in when he made his appearance on the outside. But so far, he seems to be doing better than we ever could have hoped. At birth, he was 6 pounds, 8.5 ounces and 20 inches long, which is not huge, but certainly a respectable size. Even more impressively, his Apgar scores at 1 and 5 minutes were 8 and 9. He is breathing just fine, and his O2 sats have been in the upper nineties. I was hanging out next to Magnus's crib in the NICU this morning when the neonatologists came through doing rounds, and I got to listen in. Many of them remarked that they couldn't believe that he had a heart defect, and that if he hadn't been diagnosed in utero, you would never have suspected anything was wrong with him. Of course he still has a serious congenital heart defect, but the fact that he is so otherwise healthy and strong is a wonderful thing.

Today has been a whirlwind day. I've gotten about two hours of sleep, but have mostly been hanging out with our boy, talking to doctors, and experiencing lots of firsts, including getting to hold our little guy for about 15 minutes this morning, changing his first impressively meconium-filled diaper, and pumping breastmilk (somewhat alarmingly, in my first attempt at this, the bottle attached to my left nipple filled with colostrum, while the bottle attached to my right nipple began to fill with blood).

I also took a bunch more photos of Magnus (which you can see on my Flickr account) and the more I look at him, the more I think he looks exactly like his dad. He has the same nose, the same large and funny-shaped toes, the same (lack of) eyebrows, and even makes a lot of the same facial expressions! He does, however, have my lips.