Kirsten Alia Defreitas

Our baby girl was born Monday July 28, 2008 at 5:01pm. Kirsten is 8lbs 9oz and 21 inches long. It was a long labor but of course every second was worth it.

Already being almost week past her due date, we were very excited when our labor began at 2 a.m. early sunday morning. We labored at home until about 1 p.m. Sunday afternoon. At that point our contractions had been coming regularly every five minutes for the past four hours.

We checked into MRMC at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday expecting to have our daughter that day. With little progress by 2 a.m. on Monday morning, it was obvious that we were in for a long ride. We decided not to intervene with meds and just let nature take its course.

The contractions continued to get worse but very slow progress was made. After 37 hours of labor, which included an hour and a half in the basement during a tornado warning, things seemed to be at a stand-still. At 3:30 p.m. Monday we decided to let the Doctor go ahead and break the water hoping this would help move things along. At first this seemed to do very little as well. It was 45 minutes after the water was broken that the nurse wanted to have Tina turned on her side. This did the trick. There were 30 more minutes of effective, hard contractions before it became time to push. Pushing was quick and a relief after almost two full days of contractions. It took only 15 minutes for Kirsten to arrive once the pushing began.

In the end, it was a long two days of very little sleep and almost no food for Tina. It was fustrating at times, but we always had faith that God was in control. Kirsten is a true blessing.

On a side note, Dr. Duff is a 1966 graduate of Saint Louis Christian College. He was once a student of current CCCB's Dr. Donaldson, and was classmates with CCCB professor Walton and former professor McCreary. As Dr. Duff wished us well before leaving the hospital, he parted saying that he hoped we win all but two of our basketball games next season. We play SLCC twice every year.