It's a boy!

We're excited to have a new addition to our family, Reed Gregory McKinley, named after his great grandpa. It seems like interesting names and unusual spellings are all the rage these days, so I tried to talk my wife into spelling his name "Wreighd" but she decided to go with a more traditional spelling, Reed.

He was born 11/11/09 at 5:32 AM, weighing 7 lbs. 14 oz. and measuring just under 4 ft long. Okay so he's only 20 1/2 inches.

Although he was born a little early at 36 1/2 weeks, the doctors weren't concerned about him having any complications. We were able to hold him after a fairly quick and painless (thanks to an epidural) delivery. He's a pretty good sized solid boy, and I was happy to see he has lots of strawberry blonde hair. For the first few hours he was doing really well, but later in the morning he started having a little trouble breathing, so they placed him in the NICU for some good TLC.

After a day and a half of tests and chest x-rays, they found that the reason he's been having trouble breathing is because of a pneumothorax. No this is not a character by Dr. Seuss as I initially thought; that's the Lorax. A pneumothorax occurs from a small hole in the lung that allows air to escape into the rib cage, causing the lung to partially collapse. The good news is the hole in the lung will heal itself, and may have done so already. He's also been put in an oxygen helmet to help his body absorb the extra air inside his chest; yep he's a bubble boy, I really need to get a picture.

The latest tests show that he's making progress, and will need to stay in the hospital for a few more days, but he should be just fine by the time he comes home.

Thanks for the support,
Greg, Natalie and big sister Julia