As some of you know, Michael and his wife have been expecting a baby. Well, Saturday morning at 3:11 am Michael delivered his baby girl at home.

Yeah, that's right. He delivered her at home. Rosemary Catherine was due Jan 14th but decided she wanted some friggin Halloween candy so she came early.

With the help of a 911 operator Michael safely delivered Rosemary just in time for EMTs to arrive on scene followed by 3 fireman and a police officer. Both mother and child were whisked away to a local hospital where both are doing very well. Candice was released Monday, but unfortunately Rosemary will be in the hospital for a couple months.

Baby Rosemary is doing unbelievably well. She has been breathing on her own and is very active. She responds to touch and awesomely enough to her Dr. Daddy's voice. She has had no signs of infection. Rosemary was born weighing 2lbs 3.5oz and 14" long. Oh, and she is a blonde.

So a big CONGRATULATIONS goes to Mike and Candice. Also, please keep them in your thoughts as Rosemary still has a bit to go before she can come home.

:o Wow! Congratulations all around! Make sure they remember to have their mail forwarded to the hospital room. :P (only partially kidding.)

Congrats man!

JB.

holy crap! good job delivering that baby!

CONGRATS!

I heard the story first hand this evening and I saw lil rosemary and I have to say that every bit of it is a miracle.


Mike kept his cool under a lot of pressure and the situation turned out very well.

I will let mike post up pics.

Congrats on the child! and way to man up and bring your baby girl into the world yourself. I could not have done that, i would be traumatized. Good luck with the baby girl, I hope all goes well and she is home with the family soon.

DUDE!!! Congrats, Mike! That's amazing! Way to get up and do what needs to be done! Praise God!!!!

All i can say is


frig YEAH DOOD! CONGRATULATIONS!

Good catch, Mike! I hope she grows up strong.

wow, good work.

congrats

Thank you all for your kind words. Just a little up date. Rosemary is still doing well. They weighed her last night and now she is at 1 pound and 12 oz. Not to worry she is suppose to loose that weight. What she is loosing is the water weight. Mommy is doing great. She is pumping..(gah, I dont let here touch my snipers. :P)and getting tired a lot. Im at the hospital right now. When I get home I will start to post a few pictures.

Thanks again for the kind words.

Michael

Always good to hear that unplanned births go well.

A friend of mine is an EMT and he has had to deliver out of the back of an ambulance more than a few times already. He said the first time it scared him to death since there was no proper equipment and he hadn't delivered before, to go through it with no medical training and over the phone must be leagues beyond what he felt!

But I'm sure it makes the child even more special to you :lol:

I don't think I'd have the stomach for it :wacko:

There's no special equipment on the average ambulance. If you're lucky, you get a birth kit. It's a big tub with some lubricant, a few towels and some jars and such inside. Elbow-length gloves if you're really lucky. :lol:

We didn't get any storks when I was crew chief, but some of the guys that rode along with the fire department did. I didn't have spare time to go off-campus and play fireman, though. We did have a birth kit on our ambulance IIRC. But if you don't, you just use blankets. Steal new ones from the hospital, bleach the stretcher and you're good as new.

It's not really complicated, it's just messy. The only difference is, it's body fluids instead of something else. Anyone who's played paintball has likely gotten far, far messier at some point. 15 pounds of baby and amniotic... stuff... is well manageable from a mess standpoint. It's just more of the trying to keep everybody calm. That and resisting the urge to chow down on the placenta. (I keed, I keed)


Now if you want to see something trippy, YouTube up some C-section videos. That's impressive.


EDIT: I should say, a drop of 20% in birth weight in one week is fine from what I know. She'll get it all back in no time.

The more important question is... what are you doing with all the milk in the meantime? :lol:

I read that you can actually freeze it for up to a year and even longer if it's vacuum-packaged. I hear it goes good with brandy, too. :ph43r:

what has been read cannot be unread ... :ph43r:




if the birth goes normally, then its fairly easy. an uncle of mine has personally delivered all his children (4) in there bath tub on purpose. hes kinda a religious guy who has a secret grudge against science/modern medicine and the like. so if things go smoothly, everything can be accomplished and its not terribly complicated or difficult. after all, humans have been having children for a couple of million years without modern science, so it can't be that important right?

except when something goes wrong. then it can be deadly. to the mother or the child.




but im very happy to see that even though things did not go as planned, everything is going well now.

congrats again!

Don't try to pretend you wouldn't take a little quaff fresh from the tap. :lol:

Oh, I thought you were talking about the placenta.

(fp)

I have joked with the wife about popping a shot. She has been pull an ounce and a half out of one. I thought.... Hey, It is equivalent to a bar shot. But, seriously... I dont really want to try it. Esp. for the first 14 days. All of that is for the baby. That part is much needed.

Got a guy at church that has been pimping me to bring a flask in with some of the juice so he can put it in his coffee.

With it being frozen I thought.... Hey, why not make some Ice cream.

Thanks again for all the kind words. Still trying to upload some pictures to PhotoBucket. Should have some time over the weekend to do that.

Rosemary is doing very well. Her heartbeat has dropped off a few times but from what the nurses say, that is normal for premmies. She is still having no trouble breathing on her own. She is having an ultrasound done on her brain in the morning. I told the doctor that you can give her your test but I will have to warn you that she will pass it with flying colors.

All right guys.... Please keep her in your prayers.

I heard this somewhere, but apparently nursing mothers, once they build up enough reserve pressure, can squirt 8-10 feet. Like a water pistol. :bang:

Not sure if that'll be useful for you, just letting you know.


Glad to hear the family is doing well!

Its kinda sweet tasting if I recall.......

Now we know who will be able to take care of us on the field now that he passed his shotgun medical exam.

Nice work and good luck to you.

Thanks to ben allowing me to add a few pictures of my baby girl.. Her she is. I know now how it feels to show of my baby.


Here is Rosemary at about 8 hours old. That is my hand to show how tiny she is.


Here is Rosie sun bathing in her tanning bed.

That is incredible.

Tanning bed? That's interesting.

For Vitamin D during a long hospital stay, I'd guess?

Sorry it's taken me so long to say congrats mike but CONGRATS!!!!!! i'll get over to the hospital sometime soon to check out our new front-man erm front-woman for our team/group :) take care and best wishes!!!

Dominic

I wrote a ton of stuff about what has happened of the last few weeks and I lost it all so I will just post some pix.

She just couldnt wait to see her new daddy. I'm sure she will be a lot of work for the next few months, but with a dedicated and caring father like i'm sure she has, she will grow big and strong very rapidly. My nephew just turned 1yr old here a few months back and he was a very tiny baby also, and he is turning into quite the little gentlemen. How is evreything going so far with her?

Everything is going so great. She is no longer on the C-pap which helps expand her lungs so she does not need to breath with such difficulty. She is now breathing on a cannula. A cannula is what people on Oxygen use. It is set at 30% Oxygen. We breathe 21% Oxygen. She is up to 19mls of breast milk. 19mls is equivalent to just shy of 2 table spoons every 3 hours. They have put her on a feeding pump to evenly disperse the breast milk so that she does not regurgitate. Dad was feeding her a while back and it felt like we were at a Frat party and I was milk bonging her. That was not a good day for daddy. He felt so bad. She regurgitated about 2mls. Daddy said that he would never do that again. Also, they have started fortifying her milk. Adding calories to get her beefed up a bit. There is a strong possibility that she will need a small transfusion because preemies do not have the ability to manufacture enough red blood cells that care Oxygen to the tissues and necessary place in the body that need the Oxygen to grow and to develop. She has been having a few saturation drops but we really cant tell whether or not it is truly her or if it is just poor reading from the oximeter. She has been having problems with that a lot. Because she moves around the oximeter does not read properly and bells and whistles go off and the nurse comes running in. We have checked her several times when the bells go off and she is red and pink. If the bells and dingers start going off and she is a grayish blue then there is something wrong.

So, I guess to sum things up.... She is doing great and it is going to take a lot to slow her down.

Dude. That's awesome.
I've been keeping Rose, you and your whole family in my prayers. My little girl, Estelle is just a few weeks older than Rose. When they get a little older they'll have to get together and throw paintballs at each other...maybe at SPE!!

Sounds like a plan Tim. So, Estelle was a 30 week baby? Is she still in the hospital or has she come home yet?

no, she went full term, but their birthdays are very close. She was born on Oct 2nd. Being a dad is awesome isn't it?! When do you think Rose will be able to come home? I'm sure you'll be able to enjoy it even more when she does. Is she puttin on some weight?
You guys are continually in my prayers.

Yeah... Dadhood is pretty cool, But, it has not really sunk in yet. I'm sure it will have more meaning when we bring her home. About that... I'm not really sure when we will be able to bring her home. They have not said much about that at the Hospital. We have just been going from day to day. Right now the wife told me that Rosemary is up to 2lbs 14oz. Wednesday she was not doing so well. She was sating out a lot. She was also Heart Rate dropping... Well come to find out, Rosemary had a booger the size of Texas up in her nose. No wonder she was Sat dropping. She could not breathe.

wow, that was a relief to hear that she had a big booger and nothing else was the matter, i was worried there for a bit. You likely already have some, but they make little tiny booger suckers, they look like a tiny blue turkey baster that is just the bulby end with a small spout to get in there with. I only know this from seeing it on a movie that i cant remember at all besides a woman asking someone to "Pick up some of those little blue booger sucker thingys".