Finally Home

Caleb Jonathan Wallace came home today. He is doing very well after several eventful days in the hospital (nothing bad, but some boys go through a little more...shall we say...stress, than others ;). He is now sleeping contentedly in his Maemae's arms.

Here's how everything went down:
Monday evening, Andrea decided to do some quilting so she would be on her feet and therefore bring on more contractions. It worked, but they were weak, and went away after she went to bed. The next afternoon, she got a call from her sister-in-law, Carol, who promptly scolded her for 25 minutes for not going to the hospital after the contractions had started (Carol has had three children). In a huff, she went to the delivery room to be checked out just so she could prove Carol wrong. She called me on her way there, and told me she would probably beat me home.

I got another call an hour later telling me her water had broken! Apparently it had broken the night before. So I headed up to the hospital to meet her. On the way, the obligatory traffic accident had occurred on the bridge, so I had to try and maneuver around the backup that had spilled out onto the surface streets. I was mostly successful and managed to get to the hospital even before she was officially admitted.

Since Andrea wasn't having any contractions, labor had to be induced. She labored most of the night and into the morning, but she wasn't progressing, and every time she had a contraction, baby's heart rate would drop and not recover soon enough (we found out later that this was because he actually had a hold of his umbilical cord, and had it draped over his shoulder. Every time a contraction occurred, he would clamp down on his cord, thereby cutting off his oxygen supply). Late in the morning, the doctor decided that a C-section would be necessary, so she was taken off the labor drugs. After she got off this drug, her contractions all but went away, and baby's heart rate stabilized. They wheeled her to the operating room a couple hours later, and Caleb was born after an uncomplicated procedure. It turned out he was lodged in the birth canal in a position that wouldn't allow him to go any further. He was a big boy! as you'll see. We stayed in the hospital until this morning after several checkups.

Of course, I took pictures!

Here's our last picture of just the two of us right before she goes into the operating room.



















Here's Caleb only a couple minutes after being born. You can see how big he is!























Mom and baby.





















Thank you all for your many prayers. They were answered in ways we could not have imagined! God is good and merciful!

-The Wallace Family