The Birth of Aidan Matthew Stawicki

September 1st was 28 weeks, 3 days and marked exactly a full month since Denyse was admitted to the hospital. We had now made it over 6 weeks since Denyse's water broke on July 19.

Just before midnight, Denyse started bleeding, and called me at home pretty frightened about what was happening. Since, this had happened before, I was not super worried at first, but since Denyse was pretty upset, I decided to head back to the hospital. As a precaution, the nurses put Denyse back on continuous monitoring to watch the baby's heart rate, and to watch for contractions.

At 2am, everything was still normal, and I was about to head back home for the night, but I wanted Denyse to go to the bathroom one last time before I left. I had to disconnect her from the monitors, so she could use the bathroom. After coming back to bed, I reconnected the heart rate monitor, and it immediately showed a very high heart rate of 180 beats per minute. Our baby's heart rate had never been that high in the 4 weeks of monitoring. I thought I had reconnected it wrong. We waited for a few minutes but the heart rate didn't come down at all.

We called the nurse and asked her to come in and check. She was concerned and put Denyse on oxygen, and inserted an IV so she could have some fluids, and in her words, "in case we need to use it later in an emergency". After a couple minutes it looked like this was working and the heart rate dropped to about 160 bpm. It seemed to stabilize for a while, but I decided that I was going to spend the night. Both of us were exhausted and decided to go to sleep. That was about 2:45am.

At 4am, we woke up suddenly to a room full of nurses and the perinatologist, who had just returned from doing a c-section at another hospital. I looked up at the monitor and the heart rate was again back at 180 bpm. The doctor was very concerned about what was happening, and I'll never forget his words: "Your baby needs to come out now." I asked him if he was sure. He said he really didn't like the shape of the heart rate traces, and said, "Yes, it's time." He thought the placenta was separating and the baby was being deprived of oxygen. Both Denyse and I were in shock and pretty scared. Things had gone pretty smoothly over the last 6 weeks, and were were just discussing about how Friday would be 29 weeks, and we only had 3 more weeks to go to get to 32.

There was no time to induce labor and everyone started preparing for the emergency c-section. Nurses rushed into the room with carts and they asked me to pack everything we had onto the carts so they could take it down to the recovery room. Denyse had been there for 31 days, and there was stuff all over...clothes, snacks, laptops, flower pots, puzzles. Then a nurse handed me a gown and told me to put it on. I was going to be in the OR for the surgery. It took me forever to get the surgical slippers on over my shoes.

By 4:30am they were wheeling Denyse down to OR-1, the special operating room connected to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). I was told to wait outside of the room while they got ready. I sat there nervously while the doctor scrubbed down for the surgery.

About 4:50am they opened the door and asked me to put on the surgical mask and come in. Denyse was on the operating table, with her arms tied down, and I was shown a chair near her head. There was a blue curtain blocking our view of what was going on.

Denyse had a spinal block and was conscious for the surgery, and I talked to her throughout. Our son was very low in the pelvis, and it was difficult for the doctor to get him out. Finally at 5:10am, Aidan Matthew Stawicki was born. He was not shown to us, but was quickly wrapped in a blanket and rushed into the NICU. As the nurse left the room, I did see my son's leg and foot. It was very blue, and I was very scared he would not make it, but I did not say anything to Denyse. I heard later from the nurses that Aidan was very blue when he entered the NICU, but he was quickly resuscitated and got his color back.

Several minutes later a nurse came back into the OR and said Aidan weighed 1 lbs 14.6 ounces. We were disappointed when we heard this since at his last ultrasound just 5 days earlier they estimated him to be 2 1/2 lbs. Aidan was 13.25 inches long, and his head was 9 1/2 inches around.

Another nurse then asked for "Dad", and led me through the doors into the NICU. I was excited and very nervous to see our son for the very first time.