Welcome to the World, Kirby

Well, let's just go ahead a proclaim that my body is just not meant to carry babies to full term and in a "routine" manner - they call it the curse of the nurse, even though I haven't practiced in years! So this past Saturday, after a birthday party and an Easter Egg Hunt, I was exhausted and laid down with Anna to take a nap. About an hour later, I woke up and had a major contraction that was the most painful one I'd ever had then had another one right after that and was really hurting. I called Sam (who was out at the lake) and called my doctor who told me to go ahead and come on in and he would check me out. As soon as they put me on the monitor, it was obvious that I was contracting about every 1-2 minutes and the baby was also having some heart decelerations when I contracted. My doctor was not excited about what he saw on the monitor but couldn't figure out what had changed since my weekly check-up on Tuesday (I was having to go in for weekly non-stress tests on the monitor due to my history). After watching this go on for several hours, he made the decision that even though I was only 35 weeks along, it was going to be better for the baby to be born than to continue to be put under the stress of the contractions. My parents had the girls with them and they were so excited about possibly meeting their new baby brother, that they had not gone to sleep yet and it was 10:30pm so I told them to just go ahead and all come to the hospital to await his arrival. These first couple of pictures were from the waiting on his arrival (yes, they are in their PJ's). They took me back to the OR and Samuel "Kirby" Collins was born on April 16, 2011 at 11:43 pm weighing 5lbs 13 oz. As they delivered him, my doctor found why he was struggling so much and why I was hurting so much - my placenta had started to abrupt (separate) and was only halfway functioning, but it was in a place that had not allowed for any of the blood (the cardinal sign of an abruption) to escape. He came out screaming and was looking great, until they got him back to the nursery. They ended up having to admit him into the NICU and eventually put him on a ventilator. He had a rough first night and next day and gave us all a little scare, but it looks like he's turned the corner for now. As we know all too well, the adventures in the NICU is usually never a smooth ride - there are almost always bumps along the way, so we are praying that we are over that bumpy road and on the road to coming home very soon. He is so sweet and we cannot wait to be able to hold him and cuddle him. The girls are so proud of their baby brother and have been very brave little girls when going to see him with all of the tubes and wires connected to him. We are hoping to have him weaned off the ventilator within the next 24 hours! I should get to go home tomorrow, but we don't really know when he will be able to come home yet.

Waiting patiently with Daddy

Watching through the cracks in the nursery