He's Arrived

Well, I figured I should at least leave a brief update on my status or many of you may think I dropped off the face of the planet. Baby Caleb Jon was born Wednesday, January 14th, 2009 at 9:21 pm. He was 8 pounds, 10 ounces and 19.5 inches long. Here's a brief story of what happened; it's what I wrote for an e-mail announcement that I sent out to friends and family. I will write a more in-depth post on this later. I need a week or two to recover.

This is love...


Mommy and Caleb

Sleeping Angel

Caleb Jon

He's finally here!! We are praising God for His grace and deliverance during a very treacherous labor and delivery. We went into Loma Linda University Medical Center Wednesday morning at around 9:30 am; I had been having heavy contractions since 3:30 am. When we arrived, I was dilated to 5 cm. I was given an epidural shortly after admittance, but the epidural didn't take, so they had to reinsert it (ouch). I had a working epidural about 6 hours after admittance. Things were progressing fine, and all was going well. Then at about 8:45 pm, after I had dilated to 9 cm, the medical staff were rushing into our room because the baby's heartbeat was dropping. Unbeknownst to us, his cord was tied in what's called a true knot, and as his head was heading into the birth canal, it would get tightened and cut off his blood/oxygen supply. They had me push for about 5 minutes and then quickly decided a c-section was necessary due to his sudden drops in heart rate. As they rushed me to the OR, both the doctor and one of the nurses got knocked over and fell to the ground. They were in such a rush to get the baby out. They were both saying, "I'm fine; just get her to the OR!" Minutes after entering the OR, I was administered general anesthesia (so I was out cold the entire surgery) and I was given a classical incision (so now I have 2 incisions on my abdomen that form a cross). Caleb was born at 9:21 pm. As he was pulled out, he was screaming bloody murder. Poor guy. He had gone through a lot. They tried to suction his head out while I was pushing and then they shoved his head back in when they were trying to pull him out during the c-section and then suctioned his head AGAIN as they were pulling him out of me during the c-section. His head was bruised for days afterwards. I was in surgery for 5 hours. I was bleeding, and they couldn't find where the bleeding was originating, so they had to call in an oncology specialist to find the bleed and stop it. He finally found the spot and stopped the bleeding. Praise God I'm alive and the baby too. He is our deliverer!!

I will be leaving more pictures on our family blog soon.