First 2012 baby makes a surprise entrance

by Mary Rains

The first baby of the year was born at the Mille Lacs Health System, even though the little guy was supposed to be delivered elsewhere.

Sara Denis and her husband Ray, from Zimmerman, were staying at the family cabin in Wahkon over the New Year’s weekend. She had just gotten to her 39 week milestone in her pregnancy on Jan 1. Early Monday, Denis was going to leave for work and she and her other child were going to stay at the cabin and enjoy some relaxation.

Five minutes after he left, at about 5:30 a.m., however, she felt something strange and discovered she was bleeding. After she called her husband back, she phoned her physician. He told her to get to the nearest hospital, ASAP.

Sara and Ray rushed to Mille Lacs Health System and it was quickly determined she would need an emergency C-section. “We didn’t know what was wrong, what they would find out,” said Sara. That meant initially, husband Ray couldn’t be in the surgical suite. “I had to rely on the anesthetist to be ‘my husband’ for a time,” she said, “and he was just the nicest, sweetest, person. He kept connecting with me, keeping eye contact with me, because I was scared.”

The Denises also didn’t know what the sex of their baby was, but they quickly found out when he was born at 6:56 a.m. “We discovered we had a boy, and a very big boy!” she said. Trenton Thomas Denis weighed in at 10 lb, 4 oz and was 21 inches long.

Even though Sara didn’t have her baby with the doctor who had supervised her pregnancy, and had him at MLHS instead of Fairview Princeton, she said the experience was “wonderful.” “Here we were, with people we’d never met before, a hospital we didn’t know anything about, a surgeon and an emergency,” she said. “But everyone made us feel so welcome, as if they knew us. The nurses, doctors, everyone, have all been so kind and efficient and professional. It wasn’t an easy thing to go through, but they made it as comfortable for me as they could.”