At exactly 5:30pm, on Saturday December 13th, Caleb Michael Holloway was born!  He weighed in at 7 pounds, 15 ounces and measured 21 inches long. (This makes new Grandmom Holloway the pool winner as she guessed 7lbs 14oz and 21 on the dot!)

What a journey it has been!  We’ve been dying to post pictures and videos but between the hospital stay and the LONG first night and day home, there just hasn’t been a free moment.  Alas, Bri is now fast asleep as is Caleb, so I’ve decided to sneak out and post Caleb’s birth story and some pictures and video for friends and family eager to see the little dude.  Here’s how it went down:  (lots of pictures and video of Caleb at the bottom of this post)

Caleb’s Birth Story

We woke up Saturday morning and gave labor & delivery a call, who said we were set to come in at 6am.  We grabbed the last of our bags and took off for the hospital.  Between registering and getting set up, we finally were in the room by about 6:30 and they got Bri all set up with an IV and started pitocin at this point to stimulate more contractions.  At this time Bri was about 2 1/2 CM and 75% thinned out.

They gradually increased the dosage of pitrocin, and at about 9 our OB broke the water, and that really got the ball rolling.  Bri started getting contraction after contraction with very little time in between, and they increased in strength as well.  The nurse (who was amazing all day) said that Bri could get the epidural whenever she was ready for it, but that it takes about an hour to get it working between the time to put in and the time to work etc.  After a few hours “toughing it out” to try to speed up the delivery, Bri decided to go ahead with the epidural.  It worked like magic and Bri was feeling fine again.  We pretty much played the waiting game at this point, watching 70’s gameshows on the TV and scrabble on our iPhones.

The nurse checked her at about 3:00pm and was “hoping” for her to be 6cm.  She was 8 and completely thinned, so we knew it’d be pretty soon.  We had some fun drama with our OB because he had another patient at Arrowhead hospital 15 minutes away, who was progressing apparently the same amount as Bri, and he was in between hospitals back and forth.  He finally came in and Bri started pushing at about 4:40 and it lasted about 40 minutes.  Needless to say, I feel exceptionally lucky to NOT be a woman.  Yikes!  Bri was awesome however, and before you knew it little Caleb Holloway was born!  What an amazing moment that was.  It was such an intense array of emotions and senses, we both  instantly started crying.  We couldn’t believe how beautiful he was.

He took his first looks at mom and dad and then they took him over to be cleaned up (after his poppa cut the cord of course!).  Poor Bri was pretty beat up from the delivery so they patched her up for a while and swaddled up Caleb for me to hold.  He was super alert and just gulping in the outside world faster than I’m sure we can comprehend.  After about an hour and a half Bri was in better shape and we were able to usher in my parents and sister to see the new guy and give Bri’s parents a call.  What an awesome day!  Altogether Bri was in labor appx 9 hours, which was speedy!

Our Hospital Stay & The Drama

After a couple hours in the L&D room they moved us to our post-pardom suite, where we’d be staying the next 48 hours or so.  Nurses were in and out to check on Bri and Caleb and do the necessary tests etc.  They give the husband this fold-up bed that make cement floors look like Tempur-pedic.  It felt, as I told Bri, like a thousand pointy springs with a piece of tissue on top.  Never the less I wasn’t going to be complaining…I had the easy part today!

We had some drama rather quicly in the recovery room.  The nurse came in to give Caleb a bath and she kind of panicked or something that he wasn’t breathing.  She started rubbing him a lot and holding him up saying “take a breath” etc.  Streams of panic gripped us but he ended up taking a breath.  Needless to say we were paranoid from this point on as they left him alone with us, new parents, who have no clue what little baby sounds and faces are supposed to look like at this point.  Bri began feeding Caleb an hour or so later and he ended up in another spell that seemed like he couldn’t breath.  We called the nurses and they decided to take him to the “Stork’s Nest” where he could be monitored.  We were both happy to have him there as we know we never would have slept a wink and just would have stared at him all day and night worried.  They monitored his O2 stats and heartrate and reported to us that both were kind-of-lowish and they would need to run an EKG on his heart.

We visited him at various times of the night to feed and see him, and then tried to get an hour or two sleep here and there while we waited for the EKG to be interpreted by a cardiologist.  These were tough times for us as we had dealt with his arrythmia during the pregnancy and now were facing possible complications after birth which we had hoped there wouldn’t be.

We visited the next morning and they reported his O2 stats and heart rate had looked great through the night and morning.  This was awesome news.  Our pediatrician came in and said that perhaps he was simply choking/gagging on the amniotic fluid still in his lungs and said he looked great and could be returned to our room.

He did however, have to check the EKG and said it came back as abnormal, specifically a “prolonged QT interval.”  The doctor said that they can be transient, and go away within the first 7 days of being born but if it didn’t then he’d have to be on beta-blockers for the rest of his life.  We waited a while for the doctor to call back and when he did he explained that prolonged QT syndrome is what kids/athletes have suddenly died of when they’re in massive excitement/exercise, because a severe arrhythmia kicks in and sends the heart into a frantic state.  We were quite nervous at this point, simply because of the unknown of it all.  He said he needed a follow-up EKG to confirm it in less than a week and referred us to a cardioligist for it.

We were happy to have Caleb back in the room at this point and worked (hard!) at trying not to become anxious or paranoid about the diagnosis until it was further confirmed etc.  We both had confidence that God’s plan, sick or well, was better than our plan for Caleb.  We had an up and down first night with him, lots of feeding and not much sleep, but it was awesome to have him back in the room.

Caleb had no more weird breathing episodes and so we set out to head home on Monday afternoon.  We just had to wait for the pediatrician to do his final check and release us.  He decided to do another EKG right there in the hospital, just to see if the problem had already gone away - and it had! His second EKG came back “normal” and we were in tears once more.  We’ll be following up with a cardiologist still to confirm, but what great news that was to hear!  We are praising God for his abundant kindness.

To conclude this epic-post, I’ll just say we’ve been very very very very tired as Caleb and us adjust to being at home, but it’s been a tired-ness filled with a lot of joy.  We’ve been very thankful for the thoughts, prayers, sentiments, and love from all the friends and family - we feel so blessed to have the kind of support and help that we do…(special thanks to Grandmom Holloway…without her we never would have been able to catch up on sleep and food!)

Caleb Videos

Caleb Pictures

If you want to see the pictures larger, click here to view them on our Picasa Page!

Who doesn’t remember the great Hootie and the Blowfish craze in the early 90’s.

Check out the video above for a look inside the book, Job: Poetry by John Piper.  Check out the website here

Their summary/preview:

Job lost everything: his wealth, his health, and his ten children. All swept away in one satanic storm. Reduced to a heap of flesh, ashes, and tears—rebuked by friends and jeered by strangers—righteous Job wrestled over the purpose and presence of God in the midst of unbearable pain.

With moving illustrations by Christopher Koelle, John Piper unfolds the story of Job in beautiful, compassionate poetry and revels in God’s sovereign and surprisingly joyful purposes in allowing exquisite suffering in the lives of his saints. An uplifting book, especially for those experiencing great suffering and loss.

This past week I had the privilege of sitting down with some high schoolers and discussing the “Prosperity Gospel” in modern America and it’s contrast with scripture.  For those unfamiliar,  the “Prosperity Gospel” is a term used to refer to the preaching that focuses on God “blessing” his people with material things, health, etc.

Here is a quote from a “popular” American preacher who regularly preaches the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel.  I’m omitting names as the point of this post is not to vilify anyone but rather open eyes to what’s going on…

“It’s God’s will for you to live in prosperity instead of poverty.  It’s God’s will for you to live in health and not in sickness all the days of your life”

The message that God wants you to have material things, wealth, cars, money, and to simply “be happy” is the message being pushed all across the globe by “prosperity gospel” preachers.  People find it ever so attractive (as you might expect) as preachers exclaim over and over again God’s plan for your life, and how it involves financial prosperity and good things.  As one preacher said, “Make church relevant… I find today people are not looking for theology.”

As believers, as people searching for truth, we must first hear these things and react like the Bereans do in Acts 17:11.  We must examine God’s word and see if what’s being said and taught is true.  With these prosperity teachings becoming more and more prevelant in modern preaching, television, and literature - it’s key to examine and refute false teaching.

A quick glance at Romans 5:3-4,  James 1:2-3, and 2 Corinthians 8:1-2 give us some quick Biblical perspective that flies in the face of this modern popularity.  The biblical perspective of suffering, poverty, trial and hardship is not one where these things are to be “absent” from our lives, but rather embraced with JOY as an opportunity for persevearane, character, and hope.  The Macedonians had great affliction and poverty yet had an overwhelming joy in the midst of it.

Their joy was in God, not circumstances, and certainly not material things.  It comes down to what your treasure is.  Is it money, health, prosperity?  Or is it God?  In fact, Christ himself said in Luke 14:33 that anyone who does not renounce all he has cannot be his disciple.  Seems quite the contrast to the popular prosperity teaching.  Not to mention countless warnings about riches, including the likes of 1 Timothy 6:9 that warns us that the desire for riches is a trap and a temptation.

Across the globe there is so much more “cost” to the faith of believers.  They’re lives are filled with persecution, hardship and death.  Where is their prosperity gospel?  I wonder how America would look, how Christianity would look if there was great cost associated with faith.  If people didn’t have the luxury of simply showing up to church once every couple weeks or arbitrarily calling on and abandoning the name of Christ in American leisure.

The prosperity Gospel is dangerous because it teaches us to treasure things above Christ.  God’s word doesn’t teach that.  It teaches that we may suffer, we may be broke or lack many things the world has, and yet that is our opportunity to take joy, our opportunity to hold Christ higher than all else, to shine our light before men, and to treasure the only true Treasure that exists.

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”  - Matthew 13:44-45

Here’s an audio clip from a sermon by John Piper, a pastor in Minnesota whom I greatly respect and admire. His website is www.desiringgod.org, also available in our “friends and links” section.

Here’s how we spent our anniversary:

One of my favorite songs…

When trials come no longer fear
For in the pain our God draws near
To fire a faith worth more than gold
And there His faithfulness is told
And there His faithfulness is told

Within the night I know Your peace
The breath of God brings strength to me
And new each morning mercy flows
As treasures of the darkness grow
As treasures of the darkness grow

I turn to Wisdom not my own
For every battle You have known
My confidence will rest in You
Your love endures Your ways are good
Your love endures Your ways are good

When I am weary with the cost
I see the triumph of the cross
So in it’s shadow I shall run
‘Till He completes the work begun
‘Till He completes the work begun

One day all things will be made new
I’ll see the hope You called me to
And in your kingdom paved with gold
I’ll praise your faithfulness of old
I’ll praise your faithfulness of old