Kai Juhani Laukkanen
December 21, 2010
Baby Kai arrived on Dec 21, 2010. He was about 2 weeks early! I actually went into labor while at work. I was up at Lakeline Animal Care and it was my official last day of relief work scheduled. At 4 pm, my water broke. I was 45 miles from home, so had to make the drive in early rush hour traffic! My doctor's office was not too happy about that! I arrived home about 6 pm and finished packing my bags. Markku and Suvi were so excited! They dropped me off at the hospital while their nanny Tracy took them to McDonald's.
I had called Heikki from work, so he could try to get out of New Orleans before the last flights of the night. (He missed Suvi's birth, remember?) Luckily, he did make it (thanks Southwest!) and arrived about 10 pm. My mom had come up from Boerne to be with me before he arrived.
When I arrived at the hospital, I had to go through the ER. They were confused because no one was with me, I was so calm (no contractions yet, it was my third kid, and that is just how I am), and I guess someone had given birth in the bathrooms a week before. So the admittance nurse was way more freaked than me! The doctor on call (Dr. Rutter) wanted to start pitocin right away since I was not contracting, but I convinced her to wait until Heikki arrived, just in case! So about 9:30 pm when we got confirmation that Heikki's plane had landed with him on it, she started the pitocin.
Nothing much happened for awhile, but I did not want to wait to get too painful so I got the epidural when it was painful enough! Then they turned up the pitocin, but Kai did not like that...his heart rate dropped and they had to do all sorts of things and place monitors and all before it came back up. Then we decided we did not need pitocin at all and I still progressed. My doctor, Dr. Jennifer Goss, likes to deliver her own babies, so she was called in for the actual delivery. She made it there, but barely. Just like with Suvi and Markku, once I got ready, it all went real fast! It just takes awhile to get to that point!
It was an interesting night to be born...it was a full moon and there was a total eclipse as well. (We had clouds so even though we were up all night, no sights of the eclipse!) A very rare event! Kai was born at the fading end of the eclipse at 5:22 am. He weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces, right in between Markku (7 pounds 14 ounces) and Suvi (7 pounds 10 ounces) and 20.5 inches. He was perfect! He had a stork bite on his left upper eyelid, and an interesting capillary pattern in his right ear (you see an array of blood vessals inside his ear). He was real loud right from the start...he cried right away with all his lungs!
He was a great eater right from the start. We delivered at the new hospital here in Kyle, so it was a new place for us as well. The nurses pretty much left us alone since we had been through this twice before and were happy to release us on Dec 22, so we were home for Christmas!
We all agree, this was the best Christmas gift ever! Here is a link to a great E card my mother made:http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d6a45324d7a67314e544a384e5455354e6a63784e773d3d0d0a&sb=1
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