TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Suddenly, It's Baby's Independence Day

ADVERTISEMENT

By GEORGE H. NEWMAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 5, 2008

Mother and baby are fine, but the father is still a bit shaken after his fourth child was born, this one on the living room carpet in the family's Palencia Apartments home.

The Independence Day baby boy, Giovanni Perez, was born about 3 a.m. Friday morning after the mother got out of the bath.

The parents, David and Susana Perez, and their 5 pound, 9 ounce baby, were all resting comfortably later in the day at St. Joseph's Women's Hospital, where the parents spoke about their July 4 baby.

"The way he came couldn't have been a greater explosion than that," Susana Perez said. "I thought it was just false labor."

"It seemed like it all happened in 60 seconds," David Perez said. "Susana was having minor pains, but we've been through it before and we didn't think much of it."

The Perezes have three other children, all boys, ages 9, 7 and 3. They live on Palencia Drive in a development of the same name.

"The 3-year-old slept through the whole thing," the father said.

The older children are out of state on vacation, the mother said.

"After my wife got out of the bath her water broke, and when I walked into the living room she was just laying on the carpet in the living room and the baby was coming," Perez said.

"I put a pillow under her head, grabbed some towels and the baby was born on a Tampa Bay Buccaneer blanket just like that. Poof!"

After grabbing more towels and a shoestring, Perez called 911.

Perez, 29, informed the dispatcher that his wife had just given birth. The dispatcher, Gordon Silver, a veteran with 23 other child deliveries to his credit, talked Perez through the procedure of wiping down the child's nose and face, tying off the umbilical cord, and monitoring mother and child.

"That was our fireworks," Susana Perez, 28, said.

"That was like a mortar," her husband said. "We don't need any more fireworks."

Reporter George H. Newman can be reached at (813) 865-4451 or at gnewman@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT