and we (officially) become a PARTY OF 3

Well, we have had our baby. Caleb Robert Whitaker was born at 5:58am on Wednesday, November 21st. Robert is my first name as well as my dad's (Grandpa's) first name. We wanted to keep the name going. Caleb has become a meaningful name to us over the last few months. Numbers 14:24 says "My servant Caleb has a different spirit and has followed Me fully." Our prayer as parents is that our son will have a different spirit and be a complete follower of our God. We are going to call and refer to our son as CALE.

Let's tell you the story ...

On Tuesday, Katie began to have contractions in the morning. We really didn't know if it was true labor, so we began to time them and keep Katie comfortable. We had a doctor's appointment that afternoon to track the progress. When we were leaving, we had a suspicion that we were not coming back home, so we went ahead and packed the car with our stuff for the hospital. By the time we made it to the doctor's office, we were able to time the contractions. The doctor checked Katie and said she was 90% effaced and had dilated 4 cm. Praise the Lord!

We were in active labor. We then went to check into the hospital around 5:30pm. By 6:30pm. Katie's contractions had begun to get more intense as she reached 5 cm. The contractions were coming at 2-3 minute intervals. I (Brian) was amazed at what I witnessed Katie going through. Her goal and dream was to have a natural birth which would include no medication for pain. 8 hours had passed with contraction after contraction -- but she had not dilated passed 5 cm. The doctor was wanting to adhere to our hopes, but gave us two options at this point because labor was not progressing. He told us that she was experiencing a dysfunctional labor and could not continue. Option # 1 -- Get an epidural and have a C-section or Option # 2 -- get an epidural and try to go through the remaining part of labor. We chose option # 2. So, Katie received an epidural at 1:00 in the morning. The purpose of this was to relax Katie for labor to continue and progress.

After 3 more hours, the doctor gave us some direction. Katie had not dilated passed 7-8 cm and labor had apparently stalled out. He was going to give us one more hour before giving us a C-section to have our baby. Katie did not dilate any more, so a C-section was the next step. The baby's heart beat began to show signs of distress as well ... so we knew that this was the step we were to take. All along the way, we kept claiming Isaiah 30:18-20, and we believe that the Lord was defintely guiding.

After 15 hours of active labor (11 hours with no drugs), Katie was being wheeled into the operating room to have our son. At 5:58 in the morning, the doctor lifted Cale into the air for us to see, and we began to cry. We just lost it when we heard his first cry. WOW -- what a gift! It didn't take long to discover what was the cause of a labor not progressing -- Cale was 9 pounds 10 ounces. He was a big baby. He was 20.1 inches long. He is a beautiful baby!

I (Brian) am so proud of Katie after watching her go through so much for Cale. He is one blessed boy to have a mom like Katie. We are now a family of 3!