Welcome Josiah Caleb Gilchrist!

On 12/14/08 at 1:06 AM Josiah Caleb Gilchrist was born! He was a good bit early (six days before the planned c-section; a total of 16 days before his due date) so he was smaller than his two bothers at 7 lbs, 5 oz and 19 inches long. Both he and Emily are doing well. Emily's water broke at approximately 7:30 PM on 12/13/08 while Adalia and Micah were in the bath and Michael had just finished starting a fire i the wood burning stove. Needless to say, we were not exactly ready to rush right out the door. By the time we organized childcare (thank you Kristin and Mrs. Adams) and got to the hospital they decided to go right in and do the c-section, so we were slated for an 11:00 PM surgery. A last minute emergency case pushed up back so Emily wasn't in the OR until about 12:35 AM. Everything went really smoothly (from Michael's perspective at least; of course, he wasn't the one getting cut), but by the time everything was said and done and Emily was in her permanent room, it was well after 3:00 AM. Needless to say both Emily and Michael are exhausted. Michael left the digital camera at the Hospital, so no pictures were available for this post, but many with come in the days/weeks to follow. Josiah is the spitting image of his siblings when they were infants. For now, please just pray that Emily will have a quick and relatively comfortable recovery.

You can also pray for the little boy that was born ahead of Josiah. His name is Miles and he was born with a portion of his stomach and the majority of his intestines outside of his body. While this is relatively rare, it is apparently not unheard of and is repairable as long as the doctors are aware of the condition ahead of time, which they were. The doctors expect Miles to be fine, but he had to be stabilized and flown to another hospital where he will undergo a major operation to put his organs back inside his body. Please pray for him, that everything will go well, and for his mother who barely got to see him and will not be able to see or visit him at the new hospital until she recovers from her c-section and is discharged.