He has arrived!

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17

God is so good! Our beautiful, amazing miracle of God has arrived (with a melon head)! The whole thing is still very surreal, just hard to fathom ourselves as Mom & Dad. After a loooooong process, Calie and I welcomed our first-born son into the world at 2:12 am, today on December 31st! He was 8 pounds, 6.7 ounces and measured at 19.5 inches long. Here's a very quick and sketchy rundown so please give us a call if you want all the details! Proud parents always want to share their story!

We arrived at the hospital at 7:00am on December 30th. Calie's water was broke and we began the induction about an hour later. Slowly but surely, Calie became fully dilated. Though only after a visit by her new best friend—the epidural man! At about 10:30pm Calie began three hours of valiant and impressive pushing. Towards the end though the pushing was not enough as our little melon head wedged himself in and was not heading out (pun intended). Nearly 19 hours later, the decision was quickly made to have a C-section and baby Isaiah David Vera was born at 2:12pm.

Now to some of the not-so-fun details... During the course of the pregnancy Calie came down with a fever/infection. Nothing serious, but enough to add an extra bump in the road. As a result baby Isaiah was quickly whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit after delivery. He wasn’t breathing well enough on his own so they gave him some oxygen tubes. They also had to vacuum out his insides to make sure his inners were cleared out of all meconium (That’s the baby’s first poop. The little guy took his first poop inside of Calie, ha ha ha, and so they just had to make sure none of his wastes got into the lungs, stomach, and such.) He’s still there for now as they are making sure that he is getting enough oxygen, recovering from any infections, and clearing out any bad fluids. The major bummer news was that we had to wait quite awhile before we could hold him as he was being given fluids through tubing in his umbilical cord which causes a need for extra caution. Again, if you want all the specific details give us a call, too much for blogging but we’d love to share.

During Calie’s first visit to see him (nearly 10 hours later), he looked 100-times better. He is the perfect little baby (Which by the way, are the words of the nurses and not mine; no paternal favoritism here!) Skin is pink. Vitals are strong. Has 10 little fingers and 10 little toes. Head is full of curly dark hair and is still shaped like a melon, though not as much anymore. Eyes are blue and cutely cross-eyed. Now he’s breathing the same air as we do. Calie is also doing great; she looks as beautiful as always and is just happy to have the birthing process behind her. By the way, when you see the pictures, just remember it looks a lot worse than it is. Many tubes and wires are on the poor little guy, but they’re just being extra cautious.

Last night we were finally able to see him and hold him (along with Grandma Sue and Grandpa Dave). Isaiah finally stopped being stubborn to the point they were able to put an IV through his arm and remove the umbilical cord one. That was really when it began to sink it and the surreal feelings slowly started to disappear. There was nothing better than to hold him in my arms or to look at Calie holding him. We also tried feeding him for the first time last night, though that didn’t work so well. Perhaps we’ll have better luck later this morning.

After 2 hours of sleep in 40-hour time period, Calie and I crashed long and hard last night. We definitely did not see any New Year’s ball drop! I just got back from seeing him and Calie is getting ready to try and feed him again. Each time we go over there he looks so much better. Isaiah will stay in the NICU unit but is now breathing the same air we are and has only an arm IV to keep him hydrated and nutritioned. There are also a few sensors on him keeping track of body temperature, and other vital signs. He gets better by the hour, and once he becomes a bit more hydrated he’ll be rid of the tubes for good. Poor little guy just needs to pee! As I shared, the Lord is good and things are progressing so well. We are beyond thankful knowing that God’s watchful and compassionate arm is around us.

Calie and I made a special Christmas purchase this year in place of gifts to each other—a fancy, new camera! So with that in mind I have a pretty good feeling that we’ll have plenty more pictures, better pictures and ones without tubes, in the very near future. Thank you all for your many prayers, phone calls, thoughts and emails. Please continue to keep baby Isaiah in your prayers, that all test results would be in and that he’d be well enough to come home with us on Saturday. Thanks for reading, and seriously give us a call at anytime to chat and here about some of the other details.

Oh yeah, concerning his name, both grandpas are named David so the middle name was easy. Because Calie was not able to see the him for eleven hours after the delivery, we held off on giving him a name right away. But once we were in there for the first time as a family, we thought we really couldn’t call him ‘Babyboy Vera’ anymore. So we went through our list of about 4 or 5 names and really liked Isaiah the best. It’s not quite too common and we (by we, I mean Calie) wanted to ensure the name would not be shortened into annoying nicknames. Though cheesy, my fondness for the name stemmed out of my fondness of the book in the Bible—filled with awesome words of vindication and deliverance! The name Isaiah is a Hebrew name in origin and means: “God is my salvation.”