He has arrived!!!

He has arrived! Our baby boy finally decided it was time to make his appearance, and what a grand appearance it was! He was born on Thursday, September 11, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. on the dot (which was his due date!). He weighed in at 3050 grams (6 pounds 7 ounces) and was 51 cm in length (20.1 inches). Elissa and I (and our two mothers who are here with us in Japan) are in heaven! 

We decided on the name Caeden, because it means companion. Since we are in Japan we chose kanji for his name. 恵 (kei or Cae) means grace and伝 (den) means speaker. I really didn’t like his name when I first heard it to be honest, but now I love it. His middle name is Leonard, named after Elissa’s dad. We thought it was a good fit, liked the name, and hope that our little boy will be as friendly and loving as Leonard Foote.

We couldn’t ask for a better gift than our perfect little handsome man! We couldn’t be more happy and THANKFUL TO GOD for giving us a healthy baby boy! Praise be to God and His awesome creation. He has Elissa’s cute little mouth and chin, and even makes some of the same faces as his mom when he is sleeping. He has also inherited my amazingly awesome hammer toe (see pics below). He has blue eyes (as did I when I was born, but they are very obviously not still blue) and what appears to be red hair!?!? He doesn't get his head washed until his bath tomorrow, so we will wait and see.

Elissa did such a great job all through her labor, which thankfully only lasted 9 hours (relatively fast time for a first pregnancy). When her contractions hit, they hit hard. By the third contraction, they were only 5 minutes apart. By the time that we got her in the car they were only 3 minutes apart. Her labor wasn’t too long, but it was very intense, and she really was a trooper through the whole ordeal. We decided to have the baby at a midwife’s house. Elissa did great, but ran out of energy in the end, so we went to a hospital that our midwife works with. The doctor there used a suction cup to help the little guy out. We found out that part of the difficulty that Elissa was having was due to the fact that the umbilical cord was wrapped around his head twice (and on top of that shorter than usual). The doctor and midwife did a great job in dealing with this difficulty.

Elissa is still very sore, but I think she is handling it very well. We thank all of you who have been praying for us and supporting us, and we look forward to seeing some of you when we return to the states at the end of October. Take care and God bless!