Corin's Birthday

This story was written on 4/24/09...

For those of you that hadn't heard, Kristi gave birth to our son, Corin Kilpatrick. We wanted a rare name, which we got...Corin means "spear bearer", and Kilpatrick is my and my father's middle name. She was 34 weeks and 4 days along, so he was a little bit early. Here is the story of our recent past, the details of the present and the plan for the future...

It was 5:30 in the morning on April 23, 2009, when Kristi came into our bedroom (she has been sleeping in another room with a more comfortable bed for her hips) to wake me up and tell me that I needed to come look at something. We walked into the bathroom and stood over the liquid soaked piece of tissue. She said that she sat up in bed and just felt a little "WOOSH" of fluid come out. This would be the famous "water breaking". But she felt perfectly fine and we were confusing a couple things from our childbirth class, so I went back to bed and Kristi went to work. She said that she would call her doctor later in the morning.

Flash to Kristi at work, sitting at her desk when the really BIG "WOOSH" happened. As Kristi sat there, looking like someone had just thrown a bucket of water on her, she paged our doctor. The doctor, who like everyone else who has heard this story, said "You're at work?!?" She quickly pointed Kristi in the direction of the hospital. Kristi called me at home and told me "Thundercats Are Go" (you should see the very funny movie 'Juno' if you don't get that reference). I packed up the hospital bag while Kristi's boss drove her to our house.

Once I was picked up, we headed to the hospital. This was not the hospital where we took our baby classes, or where we were planning on delivering. The doctor sent us to another hospital that had a Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) since he was coming a bit early. Thirty-four weeks is the cut off for when they would try to stop a delivery and when they would let it progress, since that is when the lungs can be sort of hit or miss on being done.

We got to the hospital at 8:00 am and got checked in. Kristi was checked at 8:30 am and was dilated 3cm and doing fine. She was calm and baby's vitals were looking good. At about 12:30 pm she was checked again and was 4cm and still doing well. We continued to progress well, with Kristi having contractions and breathing right through them like a champ. A little before 2:30 they checked her again and she was at 5-6cm. That is the point at which she started having SERIOUS contractions which were not so easy to breathe through. So at 2:30 she received an epidural. The nursing staff's goal at that point was to have her move along at about 1cm / hour. Kristi had her own schedule and moved much faster than that.

At about 6:00 pm they checked her and she was fully dilated and ready to push. Kristi, her mom Elaine, the nurse and I were in the room, with my mom Gayle in the waiting room. The nurse wanted her give three good pushes for each contraction she had. Kristi pushed HARD the first couple pushes. I could already see him at the doorway, waiting to come out. So the nurse said "OK, stop pushing, we're going to wait for the doctor". The doc came in, along with some specialists from the NICU, and we were set for the big moment. The doc told Kristi to push, and Kristi pushed like a CHAMP. Three pushes and his head was out, one more and the body followed right behind. At that point, those of us in the room not being paid by the hospital had our nice little teary moment.

Stats:
6:39pm
5 pounds, 14.2 oz
19.25 inches long

He gave a few good cries right away, and I cut the cord. The NICU people took him to their side of the room to have a look at him. They cleaned him up fast and he was looking nice and pick. He was having to work a little too hard to breathe, so they wanted to take him to the NICU. Kristi got to hold him for just a minute, and then I picked him up and moved him into his little transportation pod. Then he was off to the NICU and we had to wait for about an hour to go see him.

His numbers were looking pretty good, he was just having to work too hard to keep them there. He also needed to get a little extra of some fluid (surfactant) that hadn't completed developing in his lungs. So last night they put him on a ventilator and gave him two rounds of the lung treatment.

And that leads us to where we are now. He still has the vent in, but his numbers are looking very good and they are just waiting for him to wake up a little bit from his medications so they can remove the vent. That will be great, because then we will be able to pick him up and hold him (although we have both already had a chance to change his diaper - I think Kristi is much better at it than I am and I may have her be in charge of that department).

Which leads us to our future...the suckling / swallowing reflexes usually don't develop until the 36-38 week range, so he may have to spend a couple weeks in the NICU until he develops that action. Until then he has an IV for nutrition and Kristi is working on pumping some milk so we can have some for him. His survival is not in question with anything that they have done, and there are no risks of any long term effects. All of it is worse for us than him, since we were looking forward to being able to hold him, have him in our room and take him home with us. But I guess that is just like a kid to mess up the grown-ups' plans. We're just happy he is here and that baby and mommy are both doing fine.

We love ya's!

- Christian, Kristi and Corin