Praise God!

Praise God for His great goodness to us!

Carly and I are honored to be able to share with you the joy of our little one - now out and about in the world! Cecilia Rose is the newest Hale, and we're so excited that she is finally here with us.

So, how did this crazy awesome little lady come to be with us? Well, nine months ago (plus or minus, I haven't done the math yet!), God graced Carly and I with the gift of life and parenthood. If you take a look back at the postings for previous months, you can see Carly's belly growing and us getting our home ready to welcome a new member of the family. Waiting, childbirth classes, puking, baby rooms,.... Lah-de-dah. OK, fast forward to the good part.

Tuesday, 27 November

Around 6AM, I woke and sat up. I had turned my alarm clock off at 5:20; so much for being early to work today. As I struggled to stave off the grogginess pulling me back toward the TempurPedic, Carly rolled toward me and sleepily said "Matty, I had two contractions this morning." No biggee, that was quick becoming the norm. As I asked how far apart they were, the duration, the intensity, and all those other important details, though, it didn't sound like Carly's normal Braxton-Hicks. So being the valiant man of the household, I quickly decided that it would be necessary for me to roll back over and wait another 45 mins to see if these contractions were the real deal. A phone message to my supervisor explaining my delay in arriving for work and a flop from sitting to sleeping fell into line.

I've always been a heavy sleeper. Let me put this in perspective: my older bro Phil found great amusement in pushing me off our (double) bed when we were kids in Cincinnati, primarily because I sleep so deeply that I wouldn't wake up to the impact. While at the Academy, I literally had six alarm clocks, and could sleep through all of them simultaneously. But when your nine month pregnant wife jumps from bed and runs toward the bathroom (ie. scoots and waddles) a few hours after telling you about her contractions, you wake up. I did, around 8AM, when Carly's water broke. We weren't sure at first, because it didn't gush all over (we had strategically placed old towels about the house to prep for the event). Nope - Carly's was an on-and-off trickle, so she was able to make it to the bathroom every time.

During the months leading up to the due date, Carly and I had been busy prepping for the birth. One of the biggest endeavors we undertook was taking classes on the Bradley method for childbirth. Long story short, Bradley method is wicked awesome, focuses upon natural childbirth as well as helping parents understand birth well enough to make informed medical decisions during labor. So Carly and I had completed 24 hours of classes, and knew that the contractions she was having were part of pre-labor. We hung out at home - getting things ready for leaving for the hospital and working through Carly's contractions. In the morning, her contractions were about 45 mins apart, and they gradually worked their way down to about 15 - 20 mins apart by about 2PM. During that time, I just helped Carly, rubbing her back, reminding her to relax during contractions, etc. I also had a little work that had to be done before we took off, so between contractions I cranked that out.

Carly had a normal prenatal appointment scheduled for 3PM, so by 2PM we were packing up and heading off. We kind of packed everything with the expectation that we probably wouldn't be coming back home before our baby came. We also knew that this would be the last time we'd both be able to eat and drink freely for a long while - so we chowed down some lunch too.

Carly and I arrived late to the prenatal appointment (because she had a contraction right as we were leaving, and wanted to recover for a few), but it didn't matter much. They got us in pretty quickly. It was kind of amusing to see the look on the tech's face when she asked if Carly was having any contractions - and we responded that yep, her water had broken and she was in pre-labor! The doc got there soon - scolding us for not letting her know sooner that Carly's water had broken. That's OK, we kind of knew the hospital would rather have Carly in there, strapped down and tubed up as soon as her water broke. But then again, if there's no possibility of giving birth on the side of some random highway, how fun can the labor process be? And besides trying to live on the wild side - the average first pregnancy entails eighteen hours of labor and that would be a huge world of suck to be confined to a hospital gurney for all of that. So we stayed at home and walked and back-rubbed and stuck it to the hospital. Anyway, I digress - the doc scolded us, found Carly 2 cm dilated, and sent us to the hospital where we were planning to give birth. We embarked on the two block drive from the prenatal appointment to the hospital, grabbed some of our stuff from the car, and checked in to labor and delivery.

Sure enough, we had scarcely arrived at labor and delivery and chucked our bags in a corner when Carly was up on a table and had a fetal monitor and a contraction monitor strapped to her. For one reason or another, Carly's contractions had come to an abrupt halt after the prenatal appointment. Then a nurse came in and began preparing to insert an IV into Carly's hand without even letting us know what was up, we began asking some questions. Turns out she was preparing a petocin drip (petocin is the drug used to speed the labor process - it strengthens contractions, but doesn't directly affect dilation), something Carly and I weren't wanting to do just yet. After discussing with the doc, we decided to wait for a bit to see if the contractions would strengthen.

We ended up waiting about 3 hours, and the contractions had started again, but were weak and more than an hour apart. So we hooked that petocin drip up with the smallest amount of petocin they could (the IV was already in for some strep antibiotic that Carly did need) and viola! contractions aplenty. She went from 1+ hour apart contractions to about 10 mins apart in under an hour, and then jumped right to 1 min apart contractions. Needless to say, I was pretty busy. You know the routine - reminding Carly to keep her entire body relaxed during and between contractions, rubbing the tense parts of her bod, reminding her to breathe vs. holding, ice ships, cool washcloths, fanning, pep talks, the whole rigamarole. It was hard work - but kind of exciting and filled with anticipation.

By this time it was somewhere around 9 PM. Carly was well into the transition stage of labor, and we both had almost no time between contractions. Neither of us had eaten since 2 PM, and I had only a couple of sips of water that time. We were just too busy. I remember pouring myself a cup of coffee from my thermos at one point, and not even having time to drink any of it for about the next hour and a half. Craziness!

Carly's cousin Katy was planning on coming from Orlando to assist with the birth - ie. take photos, field phone calls, rub feet - basically, do whatever she could to help. When the contractions were still 1+ hours apart, we consulted with the nurses and told her to stay in Orlando for a championship softball game with her team. So she texted me in their extra innings - and I was able to tear myself away for a few moments and tell Katy she better start driving. Katy arrived at about 11 PM, I guess, right at the peak of transition. She was great, jumped right in and helped me with rubbing Carly's feet and watching the contraction monitor so that we could help Carly prep for the oncoming ones.

A bit beforet 12PM, Carly was fully dilated and felt the need to push! It was about time - and we were excited to see if our child would have a 27 Nov or 28 nov birthday. Little did we know.... Carly began pushing, and our baby descended very well - for the first 20 minutes. After that, Carly pushed and pushed - changing positions, following all the advice of the five nurses and doctor in the room. But our baby just didn't want to come down any further. After an hour and a half of pushing, Carly was just spent. She had been in labor for over 20 hours at that point! At that point, we decided to continue trying - but to have the C-section operating room queued up. Carly kept alternating relaxing and pushing, and had all the hospital staff really rooting for her natural birth. But by 2 AM, it was pretty obvious that nothing was happening, and so we went ahead with the C-section.

I was able to be with my bride in the OR for the C-section, and let me tell you - she was a happy, loopy lady! I was poking fun at her slurred speech and said "Babe, I finally know what you would be like if you drank too much." Maybe you just had to be there - she was singing Simon & Garfunkel songs, chattering away... And meanwhile, I could see the docs putting Carly's organs on her stomach as they tried to get to the uterus. OK - enough details - Carly and I both got to hear our baby gasp its first breath and start crying! A girl! We had picked out names - Caleb Thomas for a boy, and Cecilia Rose for a gal. This was our little one, Cecilia Rose.

Cecilia was born on 28 Nov 07 at 3:04 AM. She weighed in at 8 lbs 11.8 oz (she had weighed more, but took 3 poops before they could get her on the scale) and was 20 inches long. Both Carly and Cecilia are doing great, recovering well, and entirely exhausted from the 21 hours of labor and the C-section.

To hear your baby cry for the first time, to watch her turn from purple to pink, to hold her and see her big eyes looking back at mom and papa's - those are feelings that you just have to live to appreciate and understand, I think. At least I needed to. Carly and I are deeply humbled by this gift from God - that He has chosen to allow us as parents to share in His role of Creator and Father. How humbling that reality is - that God wants us to be like Him! Carly and I look forward to growing as parents and as a bride and groom in this crazy adventure. We'd also like to share this fun time in our lives with you - our friends and family. So we'll do our best to be posting the latest and greatest about the newest of the Hale's as often as we can.

Thanks for all of your prayers, texts, phone calls, and e-mails throughout! We'll return as many as we can, as much as Cecilia permits. In the meantime, God Bless and Keep you all!