C.J.: The D baby could've been named Drama but instead will be Daniel

Sheletta Brundidge's "D baby" arrived seven weeks early, with a lot of DRAMA and almost without the father, hospital exec husband Shawn.

Brundidge is the former Hubbard Broadcasting employee now living in Houston, where she works as an assignments editor at ABC 13.

In the middle of the night Nov. 29, Brundidge said she was awakened by an irregularity.

"I drove myself to Woman's Hospital of Texas. They took me up to labor and delivery," said Brundidge. "Girl, I was 2 centimeters dilated; in an hour I was 4 centimeters."

Why is a married woman in her third trimester driving herself to the hospital?

"Shawn was at home taking care of the other three kids," she said. Andrew, Brandon, Cameron — (called C.J. Jr. by her mom, I notice, when my ears are nearby).

The contractions were two minutes apart, and Brundidge was being prepped for a C-section when she realized, "I needed to call Shawn! Mind you, all this is happening at 3 a.m. It was too late for him to drop the kids off at Momma's house, so Mom and Dad came to our house and slept in the living room until the kids woke up. Shawn got up to the hospital just in time. It was crazy! Daniel was born [weighing 6 pounds, 4 ounces], and they rushed him to the NICU. He's seven weeks early, so they are concerned about his lung development. He's breathing on his own; I think they just want to be extra careful and make sure we don't give him our germs. You know everybody at my house has the damn flu!"

Yes, a big Thanksgiving dinner at the Brundidge residence was canceled when the flu hit. "We had all this food and nobody to eat it," she said.

Brundidge stayed in the hospital longer than usual due to various complications. That was probably best since Brandon and Cam "want to play, and climb on me and be all up in my face, but with this C-section I can't do that and they don't understand. They just think I'm pushing them away. So their little feelings get hurt."

While she's now home from the hospital, Daniel is ''about 20 minutes door to door. No highways. Literally down the road. He's still tube-feeding but soon he will learn how to take his own bottle. I'm pumping, so I am up all hours of the night. I don't know how women do this but it ain't for me. I would rather just give him formula but my friends who had premature kids say the babies need that breast milk. Going back to sleep," she ended that e-mail.

After all the excitement with the arrival of Daniel, are Sheletta and Shawn still going to continue down the alphabet and try to have "the E Baby"?

When I visited in October, I got to see Brundidge in action juggling kids and work and using yellow lights to get Andrew to school on time. She just rolls with everything life throws at her without complaint. Except for when I declined to attend church.

Melinda Jacobs' post-Rusty Gatenby venture sure didn't last very long.

Mid-October I told you that the Web's "Rusty Gatenby Review With Melinda Jacobs" was ending after two or so months. Jacobs said she tired of having to laugh at Gatenby's jokes. Ouch. For 30 years Gatenby had been a traffic/entertainment reporter at KSTP. He and Jacobs, who also covers entertainment, seemed to work well together on air, but apparently that wasn't the case behind the scenes.

When their partnership ended, Jacobs told me that as of Oct. 24 she was joining a dating show, with many other elements to it, on Tom Barnard's network.

While I was on vacation I began hearing that Jacobs was disassociating herself from that project.

What happened? I asked via e-mail.

"It just wasn't a good fit," Jacobs responded.

Twitter's @AdrianPeterson is getting testy and biblical with his detractors:

"If you don't like what I have to say, It's simple just don't follow me! Your opinion doesn't apply to me, I know who I am! #You~without~sin."

C.J. can be reached at cj@startribune.com and seen on Fox 9's "Buzz." E-mailers, please state a subject; "Hello" does not count. Attachments are not opened.