A Dad's Eye View of Caleb's Arrival

It occurred to me that when Zach was born, I wrote a little about it. Caleb's birth was quite different than Zach's, but no less amazing. It all started at about 4:30 am on Tuesday, October 27, when Bethany woke up with strong contractions, though they were about 20 minutes apart. Helpful and supportive husband that I am, I continued to sleep, and then went to work. Those contractions continued for most of the day, but didn't seem to be getting any closer together, much to Bethany's dismay.

Meanwhile, over in Colorado, a huge early snowstorm was in the forecast. Mamoo (Beth's Mom) decided not to take her chances, and got on a plane to beat the storm. Her timing was impeccable: I picked her up at Dulles Tuesday night and got to bed about 1:00 am. Not a moment too soon, because Bethany woke up with strong contractions soon after. We hit the road at about 5:30 and arrived at the hospital, and scored one of the delivery rooms that had a jacuzzi (foreshadowing...)

The labor moved along quickly. Bethany was amazing--she didn't know it or believe me when I told her, but she seemed to be completely in control the whole time. She only bit me once! And apologized shortly thereafter. At about 11:30 our midwife checked her and she was at about 6 cm dilation, and told us she was far enough along for a little dip in the jacuzzi. We had been looking forward to this for hours, so this was great news.

While Bethany was laboring in the jacuzzi, I decided to offer some helpful encouragement. I said, "Just think, we're going to have a baby before dinnertime!" Strangely, this comment did not seem to have the intended effect. Bethany glared at me and said, "By dinnertime?!" "Uh, uuuh...or sometime this afternoon!" Same response. At this point, I revised my birth partner strategy and decided to shut my cakehole.

While in the jacuzzi, the contractions started coming on strong. Bethany stayed in the tub for about 45 minutes, then our midwife came back in and we decided to see how much she had progressed. But almost immediately, Bethany felt the urge to push and the water broke. And 10 minutes later, we had a baby. For those of you keeping score, that means she went from 6 cm dilation to birth in an hour. Crazy. Amazing. Once again, Bethany delivered naturally--without an epidural or drugs of any kind. So, Caleb was alert and began eating right away and we started admiring him. His name (Caleb Patrick) is a family name: from Bethany's family (grandfather, uncle, cousin named Caleb; dad named Patrick) as well as the Old Testament hero Caleb (see Numbers 13 -14).

There was only one problem now--Zach was not allowed to come visit his new brother, since the hospital was not allowing kids under 12 into the mother-baby unit of the hospital to prevent the spread of swine flu. Stupid swine flu. We managed to convince our nurse to expedite things, so we were discharged the next day, and Zach was very happy to meet his new brother "Tay-wobe." It was quite an adorable meeting--we have a video that we have yet to download, but here's a couple pictures in the meantime:

Our second birth was just as amazing and completely different than our first. It was an absolutely stunning experience that just left me overwhelmed and grateful to God. Stay tuned for more pictures of Zach and Caleb!