Introducing Colton James Hollerbach

Colton James Hollerbach finally made his much awaited entrance to the world via emergency c-section Tuesday March 10th at 8:04 am. He weighed 8lbs 10oz, 20 1/4 in long, with a 14.5 in head!!

Erik and I headed to the hospital around 10pm Monday March 9th because I was not feeling him move as much as he should be. I was having contractions but they were only about 6 min apart and were not coming that regularly yet. Once we got into L&D triage the contractions started getting more intense and coming 2-5 min apart. They also stimulated him to make sure he was reactive and everything turned out fine with him. I was starting to dilate so they were getting us ready to walk around and see if my water would break or we would dilate more. Before I could even get off the bed my water broke, so there was no way I was going home now!! Unfortunately there was some meconium (babies first poo) in the water. Therefore he would be watched closely to make sure he was not in distress inside and NICU nurse would be present at his birth to make sure everything was okay.

We got admitted to the room, epidural in, parents got to the hospital, and the wait began. Unfortunately around 3 or 4 am I got a fever 102.9. They gave me tylenol and started me on 2 antibiotics and started trying to cool me down. Then the severe shakes set in. They kept monitoring my temperature but it never got below 102.7. Finally temp got up to 103.3, and his heart rate was getting pretty high. The doctor came in and I was 6-7 cm dilated. She was going to give me another hour to see if the antibiotics would bring my temp down. My parents went to the cafeteria to get some breakfast, it was about 7am at this point.

About 5 min later the doctor came back in, his heart rate was dropping after contractions, showing he was in becoming distressed. She said we needed to do a c-section now and get him out. Erik's mom went to find my parents, Erik got dressed for the OR, I signed the consent and within 15 min we were in the OR, prepping me. Because of the heart rate problems we now needed a NICU doctor along with the nurse there for him. They did not stimulate him to cry immediately becuase they need to do deep suctioning into his lungs to make sure he did not swallow any meconium. Those few seconds waiting to hear his cry were quite possibly they longest of my life...it felt like eternity!! Then he let out the most beautiful cry in the world and I knew he was going to be okay. They finished cleaning him up and checking him out, apgars of 8 and 9, and then brought him over to Erik so we could see him.

Finally we were back in our room, our parents waiting for us. We stayed in the hospital until Friday morning. We had some breast feeding issues, and by the time we were discharged he went from 8lbs 10oz, to 7lbs 12.oz, losing 10% of his birth weight. 10% loss is the cut off, and something has to be done. So we went home with a plan of supplementing breast feeding with formula and set up a weight check at the hospital for Monday.

The breast feeding, supplementing, and pumping every 2-2.5 hrs got to be too much for me and I couldn't take it. I did not have time to eat, drink, sleep or anything. So Erik and I decided that I would just pump and we would bottle feed him breast milk, and add formula to get him to amount he needed to be eating. That has worked out great for us. Some of the pressure had been taken off me and other people can help out with his feedings. We are still getting used to having a baby around the house. Lily, isn't too sure what she thinks about him yet. But so far she has been good around him. We are loving every minute of our new family!!