***This is the original email I sent out to friends and family, before this Blog existed, for those new to the story.*** Sooo... last night Melissa, Halen, and I boarded the plane to LA (the first of what would be 3 flights and a boat ride to reach paradise on the other side of the planet). It had been a mad dash to make our flight, having fought through Melissa having "Braxton Hicks" contractions all afternoon long, horrible rush hour traffic in the rain, and the longest, slowest line I've ever been in at the Austin airport. By some miracle we just barely, by the skin of our teeth, made it on the plane for this trip we'd had planned for 6 months.
Then, about 5 minutes later, by another miracle, we just barely made it OFF that plane before they closed the doors.
Melissa's "false labor" had gotten far more intense, and it was clear she was in no shape to do the 2 1/2 hour plane ride to LA. Our plan, having talked to a doctor in that forever line to get checked in, was to do that 'short', 2 1/2 hour flight to LA and then re-evaluate before getting on the 14 hour flight to Fiji. At the very last second, Melissa made the call I was waiting for her to make, to get off that plane.
And its a real good thing she did, because an ambulance ride and 1 hour later, a very premature little boy named Douglas Michael Wilson was born.
Right at about 8:20, the little man was born naturally at South Austin Hospital, weighing in a just under 2 pounds, in a flurry of wonder while we were all still in shock. While South Austin isn't anyone's first choice in such an emergency, luckily they had a crack team of Neo-Natal specialists from St. Davids on call... the same crack team in fact that is looking after Douglas at St. Davids' NICU ward now.
While this little guy has an awful long and hard road ahead (as do we all) to get him recovered from his sudden arrival last night (Melissa was just under 27 weeks along), he seems pretty strong so far. In his first 12 hours in the hospital, he's already gone from concentrated O2 to 'normal room air' in his tiny little ventilator. With any luck, he'll be off that thing in a few days time, since he was already breathing some on his own right after he was born.
I'm very sorry to be telling you all this in a mass email, but I hope you'll understand its been a rough night and we're still a little shell shocked, and thought this might be easier than repeating the story 50 times to all of our wonderful and worried friends and family.
Rest assured that Melissa is doing great, the girls are fine... hell, I'm even doing reasonably OK. We know its gonna be a tough few months but we are ready to face it as a family and can feel the love and support of all of you, our amazing crew of loved ones. We know you are ready to help however you can, and I'm sure we'll take some of you up on it before its over.
I'm gonna go have a little lie down with Maw now, who is at home in bed, trying to pump a little milk for when the little man can have it, hopefully in a few days.
Attached is a pic of the newest Wilson's paw prints from last night. More to come later.
No comments:
Post a Comment