{"id":42898,"date":"2022-01-06T00:27:09","date_gmt":"2022-01-06T07:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/young-cortez-couple-welcome-first-baby-of-2022-at-southwest-memorial\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:10:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:10:17","slug":"young-cortez-couple-welcome-first-baby-of-2022-at-southwest-memorial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/young-cortez-couple-welcome-first-baby-of-2022-at-southwest-memorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Cortez couple welcome first baby of 2022 at Southwest Memorial"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Parents
Parents Kelsey Keller and Tyler Earl of Cortez hold their sonThomas Dean Earl, the first baby born at Southwest Memorial Hospital in 2020. (Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Happy birthday to Thomas Dean Earl, the first baby born in 2022 at Southwest Memorial Hospital in Cortez.<\/p>\n

Kelsey Keller gave birth to Thomas Jan. 4 at 12:49 p.m. The healthy New Year\u2019s baby weighed in at 7 pounds, 5 ounces.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is wonderful, arrived a few days early,\u201d Keller said. \u201cIt\u2019s super-cool that he\u2019s the first baby of 2022. We did not expect that.\u201d<\/p>\n

New father Tyler Earl was beaming as he held his son and talked about his bright future.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an exciting experience, amazing. I\u2019ve always wanted to be a father, even when I was a kid,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"First-time
First-time father Tyler Earl holds his son, Thomas Dean Earl, who was born Jan. 4 at Southwest Memorial Hospital. (Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The couple are engaged to be married. They relayed the story of going to the hospital and having a baby, a moment etched in time for parents worldwide.<\/p>\n

Kelsey had settled in to sleep the previous night, shifted position and suddenly knew it was time.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo fast, but not too fast. It all worked out,\u201d Tyler said of the couple\u2019s nervous, late-night drive through the countryside.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was saying watch out for deer, we saw some,\u201d Kelsey added.<\/p>\n

The baby was delivered by Dr. Jessica Kaplan the next day.<\/p>\n

Thomas will grow up with his 2-year old sister, Aurora, at the family home near Cortez.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are excited for them to meet, and see how she reacts,\u201d Mom said. \u201cThe whole family is happy and can\u2019t wait to meet him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tyler said Thomas is a bit of \u201ca miracle baby\u201d because doctors previously thought he might not be able to have kids. He is named after Tyler\u2019s grandfather and uncle who passed away, and his middle name honors Kelsey\u2019s dad.<\/p>\n

The couple sees a happy, healthy childhood for Thomas in the friendly, country atmosphere of Cortez.<\/p>\n

He will grow up watching the rodeos that the whole family enjoys. They also look forward to teaching him basketball, football, fishing, fixing cars and the art of cooking. Mom went to mechanic school and envisions rebuilding a classic car with her son one day.<\/p>\n

Thomas seems to pose for the camera, and cracked a smile when it was mentioned how handsome he is.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s his first photo shoot, a special day,\u201d Mom said as the flash bulbs went off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

rodeo, fishing, and fixing cars awaits county\u2019s first son of the year<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,1972,28,29,538],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-42898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-family","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-southwest-memorial-hospital"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85494,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42898\/revisions\/85494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42898"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=42898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}